Top 10 Online Closing Techniques to Make More Sales!

“Top 10 Online Closing Techniques
to Make More Sales!”

Not all closing techniques convert well with online sales pages, but these do...

We’ve prepared a report with “101 Closing Techniques to Get Buyers to Say YES!” but frankly, not all of those will work in an online setting.

But if your business is like mine, most of it’s online...not all of it.

So, we need to be good at all the closing techniques.

And if you’re like me, you’re a lot more comfortable with some techniques than others.

But before we get to those, why do you need closing techniques when making sales?

One word: Objections.

Brian Tracy, arguably the finest sales trainer in the world, says,

“The fact is that objections are good. Objections indicate interest. Successful sales have twice as many objections as unsuccessful sales.”

Unfortunately, objections feel like rejection to a lot of folks who don’t like to sell. That was me. For a few years, sales was an area that scared me to death.

It felt a lot like being on a stage with immense pressure to perform.

Sales as Service!

Flipping the script though, like Tracy has done in his comment above, encourages even the non-salesperson to provide the best service to the prospect.

If the salesperson understands that service is ultimately their job, they not only have permission, but a duty to help people solve their problems - in exchange for money.

Closing techniques are not sneaky tactics to separate the buyer from his wallet, but persuasive tactics to get prospects to take action on something they already want and need, and to move toward that solution.

Sometimes, they’re not ready, but waiting only makes their situation worse. That’s where the right closing technique can help them take action - and hopefully implement that solution to make the necessary changes.

Closing in sales letters - especially online - presents a special problem.

We can’t be face-to-face to establish the physical rapport. Online business people struggle with that as evidenced by the rapid adoption of video on-camera sales letters.

So, we rely on closing techniques proven to work online.

Below, we review the top 10 sales closing techniques used by the most successful online marketers.

One or all of these may work for you. You may think none of them will work because your niche is “special”.

Nonsense. I used to say that too. The truth was simpler: I was afraid to ask for the sale.

My love of staying in business (which means making money) was greater than my fear of asking for a sale, so that’s finally gone. (If you’re in my community, you may have noticed that.)

Let’s review closing techniques those below.

Closing techniques proven to work online

Bracket Close

This is commonly known as a pricing panel. The prospect feels like he is making a choice among three products or three service levels when in reality, she will pick the one the owner wants 90% of the time. PricingTableExample

Usually, the panels are set up like the one above:

A low-cost, stripped-down version. (nobody wants to go slumming!)
A high-value option in the middle that suits the needs of nearly everyone with a slight price increase over the the low-cost version.
And a premium, high-cost version for those buyers who always go deluxe.

Of course, the middle one is the one the seller wants nearly everyone to buy.

Cost of Inaction Close (COI)

Hat tip to Alex Mandossian for this tip. He advises coaching students and clients to focus on COI, not ROI when presenting options to prospects.

But ROI - return on investment - is inherently positive. It will give prospects the feeling of hope and possibilities, right?

That may be true, but COI - cost of inaction - triggers the more powerful emotion driver - fear of missing out (FOMO).

Cost of Inaction needs to be spelled out: Here’s what’s going to happen if you DON’T take advantage of this today.

A great analogy is wanting to play the piano for 10 years, but never taking lessons. To continue to do what you’ve done is get what you’ve got. Still won’t be able to play the piano in 10 more years.

It’s totally emotional and psychological, but works like gangbusters. DeadlineTimerExampleMobile

FOMO will show up quite a bit in these closing techniques as the primary driver, but let’s just say it taps into that dark place we all go when we feel like someone else is getting a better deal.

Deadline Close

Many, many online marketers love this closing technique because it’s very tangible, and works like nothing else if...

...you enforce your deadlines.

A good countdown timer like Simple Countdown Creator allows marketers to schedule promotions and automations to ensure that the deadlines and sales actions happen as advertised.

Prospects and customers get accustomed to purchasing your products before the deadline because the deal will be gone after the deadline.

There are a couple of types of deadlines:

Fast-action - like the one on the left, the timer shows the visitor that they can save an extra 20% with a special coupon code in the next 14 minutes and 40 seconds before the countdown timer expires.
Sale period - this can be hours, days or weeks, but there is a deadline looming. And of course, the further out the deadline, the less urgency the prospect feels to take action.

The issue with deadlines and timers (other than enforcement) is getting the timing right. As the graph below demonstrates, sales over a period of time has a predictable pattern with a spike in the beginning, a lull in the middle, and a massive spike at the end. SalesOverTime

Often, the final spike as the deadline closes in can be 70-90 percent of sales.

So, the seller has two choices:

Collapse the time of the sale to remove as much of the lull as possible, or…
Figure out a way to spur sales during the lull period to improve conversions then.

Some techniques for that are:

Incremental price increases
Reducing bonuses
Sales contests during specific periods of the sale

And others, of course.

The big driver behind deadlines are intense scarcity and more FOMO.

Demonstration Close

OldTimeProductDemonstration Online marketers love the demonstration close.

And why not? It’s a classic.

It’s worked at the department store makeup counter for years.

Vacuum salesmen terrified a lot of homeowners by dumping dirt in the carpet to demonstrate how powerful their machine was often wowing the residents.

My favorite was the Rainbow Vacuum salesman who came to the house when I was a kid and demonstrated to my fastidious mother how dirty her carpet was by demonstrating how great the water-filled vacuum was. She was mortified to see the mud in the container swirling as he vacuumed. We bought the Rainbow Vacuum.

We use the demonstration close often on a bridge page to pre-sell our viewers on software or training programs.

Getting a customer to do a quick demo showing the power of the solution with real results helps prospects see how a “real person” has used the solution and easily translates the possibilities for themselves. That’s the Holy Grail of the demonstration close, and it has been mastered by the QVC folks.

It makes the close a simple process of revealing the price, the value and the buy button.

Directive Close

This is a very popular closing technique, but often forgotten.

Tell prospects EXACTLY what to do.

By showing the prospects a step-by-step process, you’re walking them through the process of buying. And you’re also setting the expectations, reducing the fear of the unknown and removing the hesitation.

Often, this takes the form of:

Step 1 - Click on the button

Step 2 - Input your Name, eMail and Address

Step 3 - Enter your credit card information

Step 4 - Click Submit

Step 5 - Watch your email inbox for delivery of the product…

As you’re demonstrating this process, the prospect is often taking the action steps and following along - making the purchase.

Empathy Close

I was just like you.

I had the same problem as you.

I understand completely how you feel.

I almost went bankrupt when that happened to me.

All of those are examples of statements that prospects may identify with.

The empathy close is necessary in nearly every sales presentation. If you don’t identify with the prospect, they seldom become your customer because they don’t trust or relate to you.

With an empathy close, you identify, relate, and trust the prospect first because you understand their problem.

Exclusivity Close

Everyone wants to be special.

And your prospects are special, of course, but you can point out exactly how special they are.

“Only a few people will take action on this because most people are afraid to change their lives. But that’s not you. You are a special kind of person who sees the possibilities, imagines the future, and makes it happen. That’s why you’re one of the very few that will take action on this. And it’s why we only want to work people like you in our private group…”

You get the drift.

Another way to do this is to tell people who this product is NOT for. For example, we have an exclusive live event coming up in October.

There are only 50 seats available.

And it’s limited to people in our 200 or 300 groups. In other words, you have to have a business up, making some sales, and serious about your niche.

If you don’t have a business established yet, this is not for you.

That’s an exclusivity close.

Money Talks Close

With this close, the marketer demonstrates the cost of the problem. It can be tallied up in a spreadsheet-like table.

The prospect can see the numbers and understand the cost of the problem.

If the numbers are correct, the prospect will agree with the cost of the problem.

Then, you propose a solution that will reduce the cost of that problem.

Take Away Close

This is exactly what it sounds like. And it’s incredibly effective.

As the process is revealed, the offer is amended to remove something you’d previously given. In other words, your bonus or extra feature will be removed if you don’t close now.

For example, if you’re selling software online, you may offer 6 extra months of upgrades if they purchase now. If they come back to the site tomorrow, the 6 extra months is gone.

You’ve taken it away.

This takes advantage of the fear of missing out effect so well, it’s almost painful to the prospect, which is exactly what you want...

Testimonial Close

Are prospects going to believe what you say about the effectiveness of your product solution?

Or are they more likely to believe someone who has used it, and gotten rave results.

Of course, they can more easily believe the testimonials because they appear more impartial.

That’s the beauty of testimonials.

And testimonials can be the element that moves the visitor from prospect to buyer.

These are the top 10 online closing techniques.

And we’ve only scratched the surface.

Any businessperson will want to master these closing techniques and more if they want to make more money. The great thing about an online business is that you can test which work best with your people easily.

There are hundreds of closing techniques, but we narrowed it down to the 101 best sales closing techniques in the report “101 Closing Techniques to Get Buyers to Say YES!” before it goes away.

Can Regular People Make Money Online?

By David Perdew Leave a Comment

“Can Regular People Make Money Online?” he asked…

A dialog with a person struggling with the BIG online business questions we all have in the beginning…

I got a really good question from Pete, one our long-time blog readers last week.

It was long! He warned me first thing that this was going to be a long question. And it started like this:

“My name is Pete, and I’ve been receiving your emails for a little while now. But I’ve never purchased anything, largely because I’m VERY inexperienced with all this online earning stuff and so a little unclear about how to proceed.”

Ugh, these are the kinds of questions we get and I think, “Oh, boy… here we go?”

Sometimes, these can border something similar to a $1000 coaching call, and a lot of trainers would respond with a buy button to a coaching program, but Pete’s questions were so good and so organized, I thought it might be helpful to tackle it publicly to help a lot of folks at once.

And Peter agreed to let me respond to him here so I could share it with you too.

The main question that jumped out at me was this:

“Can regular people like me make money online? Or is some super-human skill required?”

Interesting question, I thought. Of course, the answer is “YES” – almost anyone can do this. But, coming from me – the guy who obviously benefits from the affirmative answer, I decided to post the question in our Insiders Club and see what they thought about it from their experience.

Their unedited Facebook comments are included where appropriate.

A few of our community members responded like this:

You’ll find that everyone who is successful online is a “regular” person with a very unique focus and drive.

Let’s dig in…

Here’s a first response from Stephanie:

Stephanie makes a really good point. The business world is changing at light speed due to technology and new ways of making money. We have to adapt to remain viable every day.

What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow, so it’s really important to be part of a community that works together. Two (or even a 1000) heads are better than one.

But, make no mistake, even a “granny” can do this Stephanie says.

What about Pete? Can he make money online?

Let’s find out. Luckily, I have his story in his own words.

“I’m wrestling with whether or not to take the plunge, not only with MyNAMS Insiders Club but also with ‘digital marketing’ itself…I have no experience or real knowledge about online businesses. My background is actually in Christian education and various ministry-related fields…But about three years ago, I became the primary caregiver for a homebound, dementia-afflicted friend, making it impossible for me to maintain anything resembling a ‘day job.’

I’ve spent the last three years looking for ways to do (something else). And all roads seem to lead back to online stuff in one form or another…I just don’t know how to earn a living like this. And, to be honest, I’m not even sure it’s really possible… though I’ve heard a lot of fascinating rumors!”

Ah, the fascinating rumors!

That’s what intrigues us all, right? We hear about the success that everyone else is having, and it looks so easy according to them.

Pete’s doing the right thing – asking questions. I love this guy. He’s laying it all out there for everyone to see. But he’s got more…

“What’s more, of all the candidates for this kind of thing, I’m probably the worst. I’m a middle-aged geezer with no ‘list’ (or knowledge of how to get one), no ‘product’ (or savvy about how to create one), no ‘niche’ (or sense of how to find one) and, frankly, no real clue about any of this stuff.

But I desperately need a way to make a modest home-based income… And I’m willing — even eager — to work at this with the same kind of ethic I’d apply to any other business pursuit. But I don’t even know where to begin.”

Pete’s given us some great clues about himself.

First, he’s got enough gumption to reach out and ask questions. That makes him a very good candidate for creating a business online if what he says is true.

He’s motivated to the point of desperation: “I desperately need a way to make a modest home-based income…”
He’s willing to work: “I’m willing — even eager — to work at this with the same kind of ethic I’d apply to any other business pursuit.”
But he has no confidence in his ability to translate his past experience into an online business: “…no real clue about any of this stuff”
And he has a bit of a concern the world has passed him by, even though he doesn’t tell us how old he is: “I’m a middle-aged geezer with no ‘list’”

We want to help Pete get clear on two things:

Is he a candidate for doing business online?
Let’s set the right expectations for what is required to succeed.

That’s our main goal. But we also want to eliminate his excuses from the get-go. To do that, we’ve enlisted our Insiders to recount their stories.

The first one we tackle is age…

Age is not an issue. Willingness to learn and stay healthy are the key elements.

This is Ute, a grandmother first, German immigrant (many years ago) who had to learn English, and then became a writer too. Now, she’s writing books.

Age doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it. I said “Happy Birthday” to one of our folks a few weeks ago who turned 90.

Ninety! And she has a thriving online business.

As Ute says, “…it is totally possible to succeed if you clear what you want…if willing to learn, trial & error (never give up)…”

Willingness and desperation may work against each other…

I’ve found a very interesting connection between willingness and hope.

It’s almost circular. The more hope you have, the more willingness you acquire. The more willingness you get, the more hope you have.

But desperation is a double-edged sword. Desperation causes stress. If you can control the stress, a desperate longing (or what Napoleon Hill called a ‘burning desire’ in Think and Grow Rich) can be just the motivator to achieve what you want quickly.

But if you’re desperate to pay the rent, that stress can quickly eat into every thought and action you take, sucking the life right out of you. That’s why it’s so important to have a future vision.

Keeping your job, but creating the right plan to achieve what you want, can be exactly the answer for some.

Paul Taubman, one of our Insiders and a NAMS Instructor, made the switch from full-time, demanding job to full-time (and still demanding) online business person probably better than anyone I’ve known personally.

Paul came up with a plan to turn his hobby into a business. And he stuck to the plan.

Confidence comes with experience

Kevin Riley, one of our early NAMS Instructors and a MyNAMS Insider as well, told the story of how he tackled his online business after faltering the first time.

Ten years after his first, ill-timed attempt, Kevin discovered the secret to building a successful business online: Filling a gap after seeing a clear market need.

He found success quickly. After 10 years.

The key is to have the tenacity to persist and persevere. If you’re the kind of person who gets discouraged easily, you’re probably not going to be successful online.

Some days you’re going to feel beat up.

You have to be able to survive those days cheerfully to tackle the next day. That takes a special type of person.

And if you don’t have confidence in your ability, you’ll quickly be discouraged. But truthfully, overcoming the failures are what builds your confidence. So, you must embrace the challenges, and failure, to learn the lessons quickly.

No one likes failure, but if you see it for what it is – opportunity, you will progress fast.

It requires mastery. Building your confidence requires you to win occasionally. Remember Thomas Edison’s quote, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Sue Painter, one of the NAMS instructors and a long-time Insiders Club member, said she wasn’t sure a “regular person” could become an entrepreneur.

And she has a really good point. Anyone who is focused on the “safety of a 9 to 5 gig” as she puts it will never make it with any business, online or offline.

Back to Pete: He has a list of questions…

Can a guy like me REALLY go from zero to a modest but consistent monthly income doing this?
Which of your many products would you recommend for a guy like me?
What’s the difference between your approach and that of others?
Do you primarily train folks to be affiliates?
How long before I’m making money?
What should I expect to spend on things like start-up costs and monthly memberships?
Do you teach business administration, as well as marketing and tech stuff?
Are there legal issues?
What if I’m not a big social media guy?
Do I have to work in the make-money-online space to make money online?
What’s the bottom line?

Since this is getting a little long, we answer all of these questions clearly and briefly in a special free report…

If you’re the kind of person who wants to know what it REALLY takes to build your business online, or improve the one you already have, then grab the report where we answer all these questions. In detail.

And we include links to a few resources like a free software (worth $288) to help you be legally compliant with all the government requirements to do business safely.

Grab the report below.

Before you go, let’s talk about one more thing. That’s the process that we’ve developed for doing business successfully. We call it the 1-2-3 method.

The first step is getting absolutely clear on what makes you tick, and why you want to create an online business.
Next, you go for the money. Business is about solutions to problems and helping people solve those problems as much as possible. But business without cash is a nightmare waiting to happen.
And finally, ongoing team, training and tools help students stay on track with a vibrant support community, more fundamental business training and the right tools to do the job as efficiently as possible.

You can get access to the entire 1-2-3 method in our MyNAMS Insiders Club. I encourage you to check it out ASAP and get seriously focused on building your business.

What do you stand for?

By David Perdew 2 Comments

“What Do You Stand For?”

Knowing the answer to this question can energize your life and your business for the rest of your days.

It can be the difference between success and failure…

Last week, an inspirational quote image scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed. My good friend Cathy Demers had shared it.

I read it and thought, “That’s pretty profound!” And then I saw the attribution.

It was something that I had said during my interview with her. It was my quote:

“The ultimate product you create is…yourself!”

I probably heard that somewhere else, I’m sure. Who knows?

But I started thinking about that. It’s really very true. If we’re not creating our best self, we leave our best product on the shelf.

Of course though, it’s the hardest job we can have, and with the least tangible ROI, so…

We focus on strategies and tactics until we work ourselves into a quivering frenzy of activity, adrenaline rushing through our veins until we squeeze out the last nickel from our latest email promotion.

That same stimulant keeps our brains buzzing through the night as we stare wide-eyed at the ceiling pondering the next big promotion. What’s it going to be?

Like Sisyphus, we’re pushing that rock uphill, only to get to the top and wonder why?

(Don’t know Sisyphus? In Greek mythology, he was the king of Ephyra and was punished for his ‘self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness’ by being forced to roll an enormous boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down every time – for all of eternity!)

Self-aggrandizing. Self-absorbed. Selfish.

There’s a funny thing that happens though

As we begin making more money, and achieve more success, a hole in our stomach gets bigger and bigger, and we can’t quite fill it with the normal activities.

Money, work, big promotions – none of that seems to gets the juices going any longer.

And it’s because we are a little bit lost.

If you haven’t experienced this yet, you probably will at some point, especially as you begin adding the years.

It may show up as the blahs… nothing is really wrong, but there’s nothing really right either.

We begin questioning why we’re doing what we’re doing. And everything else too!

About this time, other people begin questioning our motives too.

That’s because we’ve lost our connection.

In my middle years, I saw something astounding in myself after a few well-deserved personal calamities:

Whenever I began feeling too important, a fall was just around the corner. Always.

The symptom that preceded the debacle was judgement, judging everything and everyone.

The problem with judgement is that it separates me from everyone, the people I love and the people who rely on me in my business.

People get hurt.

When that happens, I have to mash the brakes, come to a dead stop, and regroup.

The best way to do that is to reach back and ask myself, “What do I stand for?”

With that question, I’m touching the reactor core. I’m getting at the heart of the matter. I’m relieving the pressure and getting some much needed perspective on how I’m really doing.

With the perspective comes less stress, better blood flow, and calmer physical and mental systems.

But most importantly, my ego gets a good dose of rightsizing.

You see, that’s where the trouble is. Our ego wants to protect us. Staying safe usually means that we don’t make big changes. We don’t jeopardize the existing system, so it wants us to keep doing what we’ve been doing, even if it’s wrong.

Essentially, we can’t trust the ego.

The ego doesn’t care two cents what you stand for! The ego stands for itself, nothing else. Until we take charge of the little voice holding us back, we never progress. We give up. We fail – without learning. We cave into fear.

Remember earlier when I mentioned the least tangible ROI?

The return on investment (in yourself) is slow going. And it may even seem like a waste of time because it’s a lot of work doing self-discovery. And it’s not for the faint of heart.

But there are business benefits galore that come from answering the question: What do you stand for?

First, we need to make an assumption. And that is that you’re building a long-term, community-based group of prospects and buyers that you actually want to turn into evangelists for your brand. You like these people and you want to hang out with them.

That single goal implies that you want people who will identify with you, your expertise and your beliefs. In other words, they are more like you than not, or at least can identify with some of your beliefs.

With the assumption that you’re building a long-term business community, two things are really important:

Identifying, targeting, and engaging with your ideal client. Often, we speak of building your customer avatar as the key to building a community that buys your products and enjoys knowing you. This is where the LIKE part of “Know, Like and Trust” becomes especially important.
Sharing points of view. Shared attitudes, shared beliefs, shared goals – all of this comes from the person running the community. Without the commitment to transparency and actually building bonds with community members, the community will flounder along.

This sounds very risky…

It is. The risk is that you’re going to offend someone. And of course, you will. In fact, you must.

We don’t mean to offend anyone intentionally, but by answering the question, “What do you stand for?”, you can’t help but alienate some people who have completely opposite beliefs.

That doesn’t mean it has to be unfriendly or unpleasant. In fact, evidence from the 2016 U.S. election to the contrary, people can have robust discussions about difficult topics and still be friends.

And with that, often comes a lot of respect.

But the people who become your evangelists, your best partners, buyers and promoters, are those who LIKE you the most.

If they don’t know you, they can’t like you.

There’s a quote by Ernest Holmes, a New Thought leader from the 20’s through the 70’s who did a speech in 1959, that has always rung true to me:

“Find me one person who is for something and against nothing, who is redeemed enough not to condemn others out of the burden of his soul, and I will find another savior, another Jesus, and an exalted human being.”

For something and against nothing…

Wow, now that’s a really amazing concept. I said earlier that judgement is the beginning of my downfall, so I’m obviously not there, but I certainly try to come at everything from the “for something” viewpoint.

Often, it’s just a difficult perspective shift.

“Being for something and against nothing” indicates that you’re willing to bring a solution to the table instead of pounding on the problem.

When I ran projects for a major telecom, I had a rule: Don’t bring me the problem until you have a solution.

So, here I am! What do I stand for?

First, I have strong beliefs about politics and religion. Neither of those really define who I am and why I do what I do though. They’re just opinions. Everybody’s got opinions.

Nothing makes my opinions better than your opinions. If you want to persuade me that your opinion is better than mine, come armed with facts that can’t be disputed.

What I stand for is more than an opinion. It’s a guideline. A rule. These are things I believe that guide my life.

Your job is to figure out what you stand for, claim it, and voice it. Don’t be shy. Hiding your light under a bushel as the old proverb says is doing nobody any good.

Here we go. I stand for:

Hope

Hope is the driving force behind everything, I think, but you have to understand what hope is and what it is not.

Often, people will poo-poo someone who talks about hope with comments like, “Hope is not a business plan.” That’s true, but if you don’t have any hope to begin with, the business plan never gets off the ground.

Hope is not a substitute for action. I can hope for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but unless I get up, get the ingredients, and spread it on bread, it’s going to be hope misplaced.

We live in a society of personal responsibility. We’re all accountable for our progress. Hope is the first step. It’s the dream. Dream becomes reality only through action.

Love in my life

I’m not talking about lust or sometimes-when-I-get-what-I-want kind of love, but the kind of love that never goes away and puts a smile on your face every time you think of that person.

It’s not the kind of love that has strings attached. But it’s also not unconditional. There are boundaries.

My wife and I have discussed those boundaries and set them in stone. If one violates the boundaries, the relationship is in jeopardy, and trust is broken.

And we have the commitment to work at the love within the boundaries. Together.

Family

My 3rd Great Grandfather – I got the hair 🙂

Kids, parents, aunts and uncles – what a pain in the rear… But what a great joy too.

I was a great dad when my kids were very young. Then, as I became too important, I turned into a terrible dad. And now, I hope I’m a much better dad because of that experience.

It’s the same with my parents: Not such a great son, but now much better. My perspective has changed and so has my commitment to them.

Family, to me, is THE Legacy. When I’m gone, they will still be here. Today, we leave behind video, pictures and writings. People doing genealogy research in 100 years will have the benefit of looking through the Facebook archive. Oh my!

What will they see?

Having gotten involved heavily in my own family history all the way back to 1500 in England, I’m discovering the legacies others have left me include the good and the bad. Now, it’s another opportunity for me to evaluate who I want to be.

Simplicity

This is extremely hard for me.

I’m a problem solver. But I’m also part Rube Goldberg – look it up. I can build a mousetrap that is so complicated people have no idea that a mouse was ever involved.

The hardest part of my daily life is to keep it as simple as possible so I can do the most good with the resources at hand.

Keeping life simple improves all aspects of the other things I stand for. But occasionally, I like to just jump in and stir it up a bit too – bit of a chaos junkie I’ve been told.

Money

I like money. I like having money. I like giving money away. I like everything about money.

My belief is that money is nothing but energy in paper form. It’s a tool that allows us to impact the world. I don’t expect that I’ll die with a lot of money because I love to live. And as long as I can walk and breath, there’s a lot to do, many people to help, and great causes doing great work.

Money helps with all that.

And let’s face it, life is just so much easier when you don’t have to worry about money.

The management of money is a completely different animal. Everyone needs training in creating and managing money and not letting it manage you.

Travel

When I was a kid, my family loaded up the big station wagon, strapped on the car top carrier stuffed to the gills with traveling stuff, and headed cross country.

We went to the Grand Canyon, Washington D.C., and Florida among others.

When I was 15, my parents scraped enough cash together to send me on a 21-day, 9-country European school tour. It was life-changing and began my love of other cultures.

From there, I ventured to China, Peru, Ethiopia and many others. Third-world travel became my favorite thing to do. Whenever I came home from a great trip, two things happened:

I was truly grateful for being a U.S. citizen
I understood people in another culture a little better only to discover that they were very much like me with pretty similar goals in life

Travel is the great doorway that allows us to embrace other cultures we don’t understand.

Business

This is pretty obvious, but I believe in business. But maybe not for the reason you would suspect.

You see, I think business is a diplomatic tool and can be used to bring peace. One thing I learned from world travel is that everyone has a business, whether it’s selling goods in the weekly market in China, having a small coffee stand in a rural Ethiopian village, or renting your burro for transportation in the Peruvian mountains.

Business drives the world.

When people do commerce with each other, they’re friendlier and more understanding. And when everyone can feed their families, the tension in the world is reduced.

And business is incredibly creative. Since it’s all about problem solving, there’s a new challenge every day.

The solutions can be as imaginative as the customers will allow.

Oneness

I started to say “environment”. Then, I thought I should include “spirituality”. And I really thought “respect” deserved to be on this list, since that can be the basis of all relationships.

But when I looked more closely, the word that comes up is “Oneness”. In fact, it seems like a common thread throughout this piece.

We are one. When we’re not one, we’re in conflict. It’s as simple as that.

Being one with the environment means respect for land, nature, animals and the earth. It means respecting ourselves and our descendants enough to be great stewards of the world around us.

We don’t over fish, over hunt, over drill, over pollute, or anything else that could be too extreme unless we want it all to be “over”!

Being one with our community means that we are a part of, not a part from. It’s about contributing and pitching in. That can be anything from being a volunteer fireman to serving (or just supporting) the school’s parent/teacher organization to serving on the city council to picking up the trash on the road. (And hopefully, helping others see that throwing trash on the road is hurtful to all.)

Being “One With” is committing 100 percent to the group.

Start with a small group – maybe your family – and soon we realize we’re all part of a much bigger group that covers the planet.

Service

And it finally comes down to this.

I stand for service – helping others in the best way possible. I can always listen and be a friend in my small groups, but even in the larger groups like my online communities, we can help in any way possible and reasonable.

We’re here to serve.

Now, it’s your turn.

Hopefully, when you’re building your business, you’re focusing on what you stand for and bringing your special skills to those who want to be your evangelist. Start by sharing what you stand for and attracting those like-minded people as soon as possible.

Come over to the MyNAMS Facebook page and comment on this blog post to tell us what you stand for?

It’s okay. They won’t bite.

Testimonials – How to Let Your Customers Do Your Selling FOR You

By David Perdew 2 Comments

Testimonials – How to Let Your Customers
Do Your Selling FOR You

The difference between testimonials that work and those that don’t is one word: Believability

You know about testimonials – those little blurbs from customers that tell prospects how great a product or service is.

The headline and blurb at the referral engine platform Influitive says it all…

Happy customers are your BEST salespeople.

Did you also know that over 70% of customers look at product reviews before buying? And 90% of participants in a Zendesk survey say they were influenced in their buying decisions by positive reviews.

According to research firm McKinsey, customers that come in through the advocacy of other customers actually stay longer and pay you more over time.

And it gets even better, because according to Influitive, customers who advocate for you will actually stay longer and pay you more.

Advocates and Advocate Marketing?

Those are relatively new phrases getting a lot of attention because of statistics like those above and these:

Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchasing decisions. (McKinsey)
63% of consumers search for help from other customers online. (Lithium)
Brand advocates are 70% more likely to be seen as a good source of information by people around them. (BzzAgent)

Advocates can be affiliates, but they are so much more… and when an advocate evangelizes enthusiastically about your business on social media or through testimonials, prospects pay a lot more attention.

The first step in building advocates for your brand is to give happy customers the best opportunity to shout your greatness from the rooftops. That’s called a testimonial.

And even though advocacy goes way beyond testimonials, without that you’re dead in the water.

But getting testimonials can be a problem

Business people don’t want to ask for them or don’t know HOW to ask for them. And customers, while they might want to give them, don’t know how.

They actually may be a little afraid to give you a testimonial because they’re only 90% positive about the experience.

I’m going to show you why that’s the PERFECT start to a great testimonial

We’re going to show you exactly what to ask to get testimonials, how to use the testimonials to overcome the biggest objections of your prospects, and even how to get testimonials without asking.

First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room – that is, the problem with 90 percent or more of testimonials out there right now…

“I don’t believe it!”

The problem – and it’s a big problem – with testimonials is they tend to be too sugary. Too positive. Too… unbelievable.

“Since I bought the ABC Super Scooper Money Making Machine, I’ve made so much money I dumped my wife of 22 years and I married 18 year old supermodel triplets. I now own 16 homes, 83 cars and my own personal rocket ship to Mars. Plus my skin rash cleared up real nice and I’m about to buy a big yacht and an island and become president of a South American country. Let me tell you, that was the best $19.95 I ever spent!”

Yup. Uh-huh. You believe that, don’t you? Me neither.

Testimonials are a lot like resumes…

What happens when you hand your snazzy jazzy resume to a hiring manager? Sure, they read it. But do they BELIEVE it? Nope. If they did, they wouldn’t do all that digging into your past, your social media accounts, your previous employers, your college records and your references.

Why don’t they believe what they read in resumes? Two reasons:

A lot of people ‘pad’ their resume, making themselves sound better than they are. And since they don’t know you, they just have to assume you’re padding until proven otherwise.
It’s all positive. Nearly nobody ever puts anything negative on a resume. “That company canned me because I didn’t do a darn thing for 8 months but play video games on the computer and play with the company dog.” You’re not going to see that on the resume…

And what does this teach us about why people don’t believe testimonials?

A lot of testimonials are fake, or are they?

It really doesn’t matter because nearly everyone BELIEVES they’re fake.

So, the real job of a testimonial is to overcome the distrust factor, to tell the story about the relationship with the brand in a real, but positive way in just a couple of sentences.

In other words, it has to be some of the most persuasive writing on your sales page.

Readers see all positive testimonials and immediately flip into disbelief.

So, how do you get real testimonials that people BELIEVE?

By getting believable testimonials. (I know, that’s a little chicken and egg, but stick with me just a second and it will make more sense.)

Let’s tackle the big question.

What makes a testimonial believable?

If the testimonial starts out on a negative note, people’s defenses go down and they your credibility goes up. In fact, not only does a bit of negativity ring true and become believable, but there’s a second benefit as well:

If the testimonial starts out negative – just a little, people are drawn into it from start to finish because we all like to see what happens next. A slightly negative review that turns positive becomes a believable story with a solution.

For example, if I were to write a testimonial for MyNAMS Insiders Club as a member only (yes, I know – I own it, so right away I’m at a disadvantage), I would start out like this:

“When I first heard about the MyNAMS Insiders Club, I thought it was too good to be true. And when I stumbled around in the resources library, I was so lost because there was so much, I thought I’d wasted my money. But once I realized this is not just an average superficial training center, but a full library of updated tools and training on any business topic that I can use for life whenever I need it, I was completely blown away…”

So, let’s break it down.

The first two sentences are pretty negative, but they get to the biggest complaints we have about the Insiders Club: 1) We’ve built a training system at a price that seems to be too good to be true, and 2) there’s so much material that people get overwhelmed very quickly.

The key point is that I put those issues out there right away. Those objections (which are ones EVERYONE will have when they’re visiting any sales page) are recognized and CONFIRMED immediately.

Then, in the reversal, I show why I was wrong, or overcame the issues, and was positively affected.

Another example:

Let’s say a friend is recommending an auto mechanic to you. The conversation might be like this:

“You know that repair shop on 5th and Vine, the one in the tacky yellow building? Well I went in there the other day because something was wrong with my car.

The place came highly recommended, but I gotta tell you when I walked through the door, I wasn’t too sure. It didn’t look nearly as modern as the repair shop at the dealership.

But they took great care of me and my car. They diagnosed the problem in minutes, told me exactly what was wrong and how long it would take to fix it.

It cost way less than I thought it would, and they had me back on the road in 40 minutes. I was so impressed.

The last time I went to the dealership they tried to upsell me on a bunch of stuff and I know they overcharged for what I let them do. I’ll never go back to the dealership again.

That repair shop might look a little funky, but the mechanics are top notch, fast and friendly, and they don’t try to rip you off.”

Notice how different this testimonial is from most of the testimonials you see online. This one starts out negative, talking about “the tacky yellow building,” and “it didn’t look nearly as modern as the repair shop at the dealership.”

And near the close it gets negative again, saying “That repair shop might look a little funky.”

But there is no doubt the author of the testimonial is thrilled with the service he received and the price he paid.

THIS is a testimonial people will believe.

In fact, if you have several of these kinds of testimonials, half your job of selling will be done for you.

That’s because your customers will be overcoming prospect’s objections for you, in a way you alone could never do.

Just imagine, you haven’t written one word of your sales letter or sales video yet, and you already have half of your selling done.

How sweet would that be?

Good testimonials help with targeting too…

This is a really important point and often overlooked.

A great testimonial pushes people away who are not a good fit for the business offer as well. That’s important. The wrong people in your business can suck up a ton of time and resources and will NEVER be happy.

Look at the repair shop again.

Some people don’t mind paying double or triple prices if they don’t have to sit in a “tacky yellow building” while waiting for their car repair, but instead get to sit in a nicely appointed waiting area with wi-fi, cable TV and a coffee machine.

If you’re the kind of customer that values ambiance more than money, the tacky little repair shop is not for you. That testimonial just saved the business from having to deal with an unhappy customer.

Here are 3 more tips on getting and using testimonials…

1: Testimonials that are rich in detail are more believable.

For example, “I love the bigger dials on this stove” versus… “The dials are almost twice the size of the older model, making it much easier for these tired old eyes to see the settings. Because of this, I no longer burn my eggs and my wife no longer complains about having a burnt smell in her spotless kitchen.”

2: “Interesting, tell me more.”

If you are speaking to a customer, use the above phrase to get them digging deeper and telling you more about their experience. Also, anytime you’re getting feedback by phone or in person, remember to ask only open-ended questions. This will provide you with much more information than simple yes/no questions. And of course the same applies to written feedback – ask only open-ended questions.

3: Name and website

When asking to use their feedback as a testimonial, be sure to tell them you’ll be using their name and URL if they have one. This is free advertising for their website. Who doesn’t love that?

Let’s look at a couple of real examples for some of our products

MyNAMS Insiders Club

http://nams.ws/trial

When someone makes a lot of progress, you want that person to talk about their success and their process. Often, customers don’t do it because they don’t value their accomplishments enough. Jeff does a nice job of starting from a dubious place and showing how he followed the process through to success. The objection he’s overcoming right away is the question, “Is this is a get-rich-quick scheme?” Right away, he talks about a 12-month investment of time…

“I came into NAMS Insiders Club three years ago through the list building challenge. I fell in love with the monthly challenges. That year, I took every challenge. I accomplished every challenge in 12 months straight.

At the end of the year, I had the beginnings of a real business. I came into NAMS really with a hobby, not really a real business. I really didn’t know the first thing about building an online business. I had taken some courses in list building and things like that, but really knew very, very little. By the end of the year, I had 12 things that I should be doing in my business every single day that helped me to build my business.

What I enjoy now, two years later, is the weekly live calls where Jennifer and David get on and they show us what they’re doing in NAMS. How they’re running their own business. What I really appreciate about that is that they share with us the things that work, but also the things that don’t work. They share how they measure things. Then how they make changes and adjustments when things don’t go according to plan or aren’t as successful as they hoped they were.

It really helps me because I’m not in the internet marketing niche. I’m in the Catholic education niche. A lot of the things that work for a lot of marketers don’t work in my niche. They don’t work for my audience. By watching David and Jennifer, I can choose what I want to try. I can learn from their example of how to measure my success, then how to make changes when I don’t meet with success. I’m able to apply what I’m learning to my own audience and to my own business. That’s really really valuable.

Join the MyNAMS Insiders Club. You will find a great community of business people who support each other. You’ll find great education. You’ll find value year after year after year.”

Jeff Arrowood, FromTheAbbey.com

Camp Clarity

http://nams.ws/clarity

I like this testimonial from Mitchell Cohn because he sets the bar for the amount of effort and seriousness required for the Clarity program to be successful. He says straight up that the objection may be that it is “one of the most difficult things” he’s had to do. People who don’t take the course seriously are never satisfied with the outcome. Those who do are very satisfied. So, we want to make that clear from the beginning. He does. And then he talks about the benefits of doing that.

“Wow, David. I’ve just finished Camp Clarity. The course was well-named. I think that was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. If you’re as serious as I was in wanting to know where you’re headed and WHY, this course really makes you think – and takes a significant amount of fortitude, insight, and mental energy.

I have to admit that where I ended up is NOT AT ALL where I expect to be. I’ve also learned that lying to one’s self is a lot easier than facing the truth and working through some difficult issues. The end result, though, is well worth it. I have a clear end in sight. I have clear vision for the businesses I wish to create and a roadmap to get there. Thanks for this roller-coaster ride.

I’m on to my next quest, 12 Steps to Building a Better Business, which is, I believe, what both you and Jen have suggested.”

Mitchell Cohn

Monetize Your Life With Storytelling Workshop

https://nams.ws/storytelling

This was an email that came into Cathy Demers who had hosted me on a webinar about the Storytelling Workshop.

“Hi Cathy,

Thank you for hosting David Perdew today. I really liked the exercise of listing your everyday events and finding the universal truth.

I’m the head of the nominating committee here in my senior center (I’m 83) but I realized I could use that hook (step 1 in the process) to talk about non-participation, entitlement, how a leader has to have patience and understanding along with organizing skills, and about dropping out of a tribe that’s no longer serving your interests. I could write a whole series of ‘lessons’ from that one experience.

What a gift to help me see those possibilities.

I LOVE this.

Please forward this to David with my thanks.

PS: You know, we never know when one idea will start a large reaction. I’m a prolific writer and podcaster and this one idea will help me touch more lives. Thank you both.”

Cara

I love this testimonial because right away she throws out what would be an objection for many people – she’s 83 – and definitely undaunted because she dove right in and got results right away.

This testimonial was much more of an email of appreciation that a pre-conceived testimonial, exactly the kind of endorsement that drips with sincerity.

The 5 Mistakes That Guarantee Your Business Never Gets Off The Ground – Part 2

By David Perdew 1 Comment

“These 5 Pieces of REALLY Bad Advice That Cripples ALL New Online Business Owners … UNLESS You Discover the TRUTH Before It’s Too Late!”

If you haven't read Part 1 of this 2 part series, be sure to catch it first here...

Part 2 of 2

I got on a roll in Part 1 of this series taking on all the $27 gurus out there who grab your money and run with the latest ‘secret loophole’ or ‘hack’!

The MyNAMS Insiders Club members love it when I do that. They know we have their best interest at heart. We do everything we can to protect our community from the nonsense out in the marketing world.

We also make sure that we introduce our members to really good people with high integrity that believe in our #SellNoCrap mantra by providing real solutions to real business problems.

And there are a bunch of great folks that fall into that category.

What’s our goal in building a community like the MyNAMS Insiders Club?

Frankly, I get a little bashful when I talk about the Insiders community.

Someone asked me today which I like best: Working with new entrepreneurs, high-end coaching clients or building products.

My answer surprised them. I LOVE working with our Insiders Club members. It’s the community! It’s the honesty and the support that we give one another.

If you haven’t found a community of like-minded people who are doing what you do, I invite you to give us a try. One dollar gets you in the Insiders Club for 14 days. Then, you can decide if it’s right for you.

I mentioned in Part 1 that the Insiders Club is like the business behind the glass wall. All the Insiders watch as we figure out what’s working today and in the future for the long haul.

What we teach and what we preach is from our experience. Every week, on our live mastermind call with the Insiders, we review our experience in our business, and share what’s working and what’s not working from our members as well.

We root out the really bad advice that stinks up the Internet, and try to be a guiding light for the new or experienced marketer to get on and stay on the right path, right away.

Let me tell you, it’s a full-time job. There’s a ton of really bad advice out there. It’s tragic too because following bad advice causes you lose momentum, time, money and hope.

It’s hard to recover from that.

That’s why I decided to tackle the worst of the bad advice in this 2-part series. In Part 1, we focused on the two worst, and most common, pieces of bad advice to guard yourself against:

Create your product first
Get more traffic

In Part 2, I’m focusing on these other seriously flawed pieces of advice:

Focus on your passion
Get the money and get out
Get your Infrastructure in place first

Bad Advice #3: Focus On Your Passion…

Here’s a disclaimer.

I wholeheartedly believe in this philosophy. I teach it. I preach it.

But there’s a second part to this that has to be considered: How is your money situation today?

If you’re panicked about paying your electric bill today, telling you to follow your bliss and focus on your passion is a real disservice.

Your passion at the moment is to get enough money to pay the electric bill!

And, as a business coach, I’m an idiot if I don’t recognize that.

There’s two parts to a passion-based business. And by the way, I LOVE passion-based businesses because when you love what you’re doing, chances are that you’ll do it for a really long time and successfully!

Most people who start a business are reacting to some force in their lives. Here are some examples:

Down-sized or laid off or fired
Medical ailments restrict what you can do
Incredibly unhappy working for the man
Very passionate about a cause or a process
Control freak who doesn’t trust anyone or any institution to be there for you
Entrepreneurialitis (I made up that word) which presents itself as an extreme freedom seeker

All of these have one thing in common: Transition.

Every entrepreneur I know started their business while in some form of transition. And transition, by definition, is a state of flux which can be very stressful.

So, the two parts of creating a passion-based business are:

Triage - how to stop the bleeding quickly? Every person in transition needs to reduce the stress as fast as possible. Often, that means building a system to create money fast to alleviate the financial stress as well as a support group to prop you up and guide you through the personal stress that appears when friends and family tell you that you may be a little crazy for starting a business. (I have an aunt who still tells after 12 years of online business, “I just wish you’d get a job.”)
Long-term prognosis - now, that you’ve stopped the bleeding and reduced your stress, how do you build a business that feeds your soul, one that you can love a long time?

So, when you hear teachers (like me) say, “Follow your passion,” make sure you are past the triage stage of your business life.

Always keep your passion in front of you. But reduce your stress first so you can survive.

Why is focusing on passion AND money so important?

There’s a little thing called the Important / Urgent matrix. It’s one of the best reminders for what you should be working on at all times.

UrgentImportantMatrix

You’ll notice there are four quadrants:

Urgent and Important
Important but not Urgent
Urgent but not Important
Not Urgent and not Important

I won’t go into this in detail. We do that in the Insiders Club. But I will point out that if building a business around your passion is your IMPORTANT goal, then paying the electric bill is the URGENT.

Once the Urgent and Important needs are met, you want to live in as much of the Important and not Urgent world as possible because that’s where your growth and happiness is sure to live.

Never focus on your passion without taking care of your basic needs first. Huge mistake. But you want to focus on your passion as much as possible.

Bad Advice #4: Get the Money and Get Out…

This is just horrible advice.

We all want more money, but getting money at any cost is one the most immoral things you can do. The street equivalent is the Old-West snake oil salesman.

He sold a solution that didn’t work at best, and was deadly at worst, while disappearing quickly before the poor consumer could complain - or recover, as the case may be.

In today’s marketplace, there are a lot of snake oil salesmen.

They’re selling solutions:

to problems you don’t really have
that don’t work
or even worse, that cause bigger issues than you had in the beginning

How many times have you purchased a product or a training program only to find that 3 months later, the access page is gone, the seller has disappeared, or doesn’t support the product any longer.

They’ve basically done the product launch hit-and-run.

Hit your wallet and run with the money!

Why would they do that?

It’s about the money.

It’s always about the money for people like that.

I love money too. Money allows me to have a great life with a great wife doing things that we love to do together. It allows me to spend time with my parents and my kids when our schedules permit. And it allows me to support my family when they need help.

But most of all, money allows me to serve my customers and my community, especially the MyNAMS Insiders Club community better.

For example, when the NAMS team searched for more than a year for the right WordPress page builder, we landed on Beaver Builder. It’s an outstanding tool that’s easy to use and performs way more design tasks than we’ll ever use.

Our pages, designed in Beaver Builder, have become beautiful and modern.

Instead of buying the single or multi-site license, I bought the agency license. I paid twice as much for that tool, and will annually.

Then, I gave the license to ALL Insiders as one benefit of being an Insider with Beaver Builder’s blessing!

I used the money that I earned from their membership dues to give more value back to them.

When you focus on prospects and customers and how to create better value to improve those relationships, every offer whether it’s yours or a partner’s solution must support and enhance that relationship.

The relationship becomes more important than the money.

I have dug into my own pocket to give more value to our Insiders even when I didn’t have the money to spare. The relationship with Insiders is that important.

Today, as of this writing, an Insider gets:

Beaver Builder multi-site license
Beaver Builder Power Pack templates add-on tools
FTC Guardian (basic version)
Simple Video Management System (single site license)
Simple Click Tracker (single site license)
Simple Countdown Creator (single site license)
Simple Quiz Engine (single site license)

And a single site license of all the other plugins we’re launching this year (that will be about 10 plugins total.)

That’s just a sampling of the tools that we provide in addition to the team and training resources.

Bad Advice #5: Get Your Infrastructure in Place First

Now there’s a piece of advice that will keep you stuck in never-never-land forever!

And it couldn’t be more wrong.

Your infrastructure is only important if you’ve got money-making funnels to your own products in place. If you do, then focus on infrastructure.

But for this particular piece of advice, the key word is “FIRST”!

Refer back to Bad Advice#1 in Part 1. Never build your product or your infrastructure until you’ve borrowed someone else’s to learn how to market and sell their products.

Infrastructure costs money.

Every email, every subscriber, every download has a cost associated with it.

It makes no sense to create a huge infrastructure expense overhead before you have an income rolling in.

That being said, you will need some basic infrastructure such as:

Domain name. (If nothing else, you’ll want to establish your email marketing brand with the domain name. David [@] MyNAMS.com is much more impressive than david [@] gmail.com. You can get one registered today quickly and easily at my registrar called SimpleNicheDomains.com - this will cost you about $10 per year.
Autoresponder system. Building your list from day 1 of your new business is your number 1 job. An autoresponder system like Aweber is great to start with. And you’ll get started for less than $25 per month. You don’t even have to have a landing page or a hosting account outside of Aweber at first, but you will soon. And that’s easy.

For hosting and further infrastructure tools, refer back to our favorite tools post.

But back to our original premise, don’t get befuddled by the technology!

Your job as an online business person is to sell stuff putting it bluntly.

If you don’t sell stuff, you don’t make money. If you don’t make money, you don’t have a business, but an expensive hobby.

And I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to have an expensive hobby.

Therefore, selling stuff is the key.

Other people’s stuff is fine.

Sell using affiliate platforms, social media, Youtube, and email if that works.

But SELL!

Learning how to sell is the best, most profitable skill you can learn. Don’t get suckered into thinking you have to have an extensive website infrastructure.

Not true. Sell and earn enough money until you can hire help to build and infrastructure for you.

Is There More Bad Advice to Avoid?

Of course. There’s a ton.

That’s why you need to find a home on the web. A place where you can trust the leaders, get involved with the peers, and find partnerships, relationships, tools and training.

I love the MyNAMS Insiders Club for that reason. And I’d love to see you there.

So much, that we’re offering a 14-day $1 trial to the community.

“Top 10 Online Closing Techniques to Make More Sales!”