For the first two years of this newsletter, I never made any offers.
Why?
Because, like Phineas Gage, who had a steel rod rammed through his eye socket, I apply a different part of my brain when I judge myself than when I judge others.
When I judge others, I yell at them if they don’t include an offer in each email. “Put something, anything, at the end of your email.”
I’ve told people to at least put a link to something free and interesting. And it’s certainly better to end your email with a link than with nothing.
Of course, it’s better still to have a paid offer, and to have the chance to get paid.
But what if you’re creating something big and heavy, something that won’t be ready yet for months or maybe a year?
And what if in the meantime you don’t want to get distracted by creating another offer, something quick and cheap… or by finding quality affiliate stuff to promote… or by hawking your mutton as a “consultant”?
I wanna share a story with you. It came from Dan Kennedy’s email newsletter a few weeks ago. You might know Dan as a direct marketing and copywriting genius, but he also had a background in person-to-person sales. And here’s Dan’s bit about that:
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A story I did not have time to tell in my presentation dates back to my extensive work with a group of retirement communities in Florida. Often, their salespeople had soon-to-be-retirees and seniors on tour who were visiting from up North, had homes to sell, adult children to deal with, etc., and came over for a look while on vacation. They could not immediately be sold a home site.
We invented a series of lesser “things” they could and would buy: first, a 30, 60, or 90 day hold on a particular lot location; if not that, a 30, 60, or 90 day ‘first notification option’ on a location (meaning, if someone else wanted it, they’d be called before that new buyer was allowed to have it). Next, a 3, 6 or 12-month price lock, for a fee. All these fees were credited to purchase but non-refundable otherwise.
Three different ‘products’ to be sold when the product could not be sold. The conditional close is better than no close at all. A real sales pro HATES not closing.
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I don’t know about you, but I do know about me, and me was very impressed by this story.
I had heard of people taking free consults, and turning those into paid diagnostic reports.
I had heard of people taking free lead magnets, and turning them into paid front-end offers.
But I had never heard of people taking a free waiting list, and turning that into a source of income — not until Dan opened my eyes.
I tried to think about what’s really going on here, how to generalize this idea. I haven’t figured it out. Maybe you can clue me in.
The best that I came up with is that there is value to your prospect that you might not be charging for now. Access… flexibility… convenience… security… extra value, above and beyond your core offer. These are all things you can sell ahead of time, even before your main thing is ready to sell, or even pre-sell.
Or maybe what’s going on is simply what Dan says at the end. Making a sale is nicer than not making a sale. So think about what you can sell, today, even if it’s just a promise or a future option.
Fortunately, I have an offer to put at the end of my email tonight. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with anything I just told you about. That’s also something I would yell at other people about… but that I foolishly allow myself.
But my lack of proper selling tonight doesn’t change the fact that my offer tonight is valuable.
In fact, it’s most valuable, if only you spend an hour learning it, and then spend a lifetime applying it. In case you’d like to find out the full story, and maybe buy: