Thanks for picking up your copy of Introverted Selling Secrets.

This book was written for two types of people.

First, the salespeople who feel like the traditional methods of selling just don’t work for
them and they’re looking for a better way.

And the non-salespeople who recognize a need to learn how to sell themselves better
and desire a reliable framework for doing so.

Table of Contents

Name of Chapter Page

How I Learned How to Sell Despite Being Scared Sh*tless 2

The 7 Major Sales Myths Debunked 8

The Ultimate Selling Secret 23

The 5 Steps for Selling Anything to Anyone 26

7 Unconventional Techniques for Doubling Your Sales 31

How to Make Price Irrelevant 47

How to Sell a Commodity for More than Everyone Else 48

The Never-Ending Lead Generation System. 50

Email Wizardry 57

The Billion Dollar Habit 60

Harness the Power of Super Syndication. 62

The Ultimate Asset 64

The Devils Pitchfork Methodology 66

13 Proven Principles for Turning Advertising into Money. 68

How I Learned How to Sell Despite Being Scared Sh*tless

My name’s Ben Byrne and everyday I sell things for a living.

I’ll come right out and say it.

I’ve always wanted to be successful, but I didn’t always want to be a salesman.
In fact, most of my life I looked down on sales.

That was before I realized how important a job it is...not to mention how difficult selling
is.

Both of my parents are salespeople and business owners. Growing up I always knew I
wanted to run my own business at some point like my dad...
Probably because it was rammed into my head at an early age that, “I’d never be
happy or get rich working for someone else”.

The thing is, I wanted to run a business without selling...

That led me to take mechanical engineering.

During school, I quickly realized I was more interested in business than engineering, so
I began reading 3-4 books a week.
The books were on entrepreneurship, finance, investing, marketing, and startups - the
usual stuff.

It dawned on me that entrepreneurship was ALL about selling. It was clear as day... If I
wanted to be successful, I would have to learn how to sell. So, I got it into my head I
would find a technical sales jobs after graduating.

I’m from a small town on the east coast of Canada called Halifax. I quickly learned our
job market isn’t huge, especially for mechanical engineers. Not only could I not find a
technical sales job, I couldn’t find ANY job after I graduated. (Probably because I
couldn’t sell myself).

It wasn’t long after, an opportunity came up to move to Wasaga Beach, Ontario with my
family. It’s about an hour and a half north of Toronto. A real beautiful place to be in the
summer.
There I figured I would have a much better chance at landing a good paying
engineering job somewhere around Toronto. My goal was to bank enough money to
start my own business. So, I packed up everything, said goodbye to my friends, and hit
the road.

The not so funny thing about engineering gigs is they typically want you to have 3- 5
years experience before they hire you. Nobody wants the expense of training someone
without work experience.

I spent 3 months cold calling engineer firms, applying for jobs, and it all went nowhere...

Until one day, I got a call from a solar panel company looking to hire people for door to
door sales.
At that point, money was tight and I didn’t have the luxury of turning them down.
On the plus side, they promised between $500-$1200 commissions for each sale, so I
reluctantly took the job.

I figured at worst, I’d be able to hone my skills much faster than most other types of
sales gigs just because I’d be talking to so many people every day. Plus, I’d have real
selling experience to make myself more attractive for a secure technical sales job.

I bit the bullet, accepted the offer, and drove down to Toronto for training.

I’ve never exactly been the most outgoing person, but I figured if I focused on becoming
more extroverted, I could get better at selling. Plus, while I was still in school, I started
reading a lot of self development books, so I figured I could train myself to become
more of a “people person”.

I’ll never forget my first day on the field. My sales manager dropped me off in a nice
neighbourhood after 3 days of in class training and basically said good luck, see you in
a few hours.

Walking up to that first door and gathering the courage to knock…my heart was
pounding. I softly knocked on the door, hoping nobody would be home.

A little boy. He was probably 6 or 7 years old. I was so nervous, I almost ran
away from him. It was pretty damn embarrassing.

For the next few hours, I probably sounded like a bumbling idiot to every person I talked
to. I couldn’t remember the pitch they taught us, and I ended up making a new one each
door I knocked on. My first day was painful to say the least.

When I got home that first night I was so drained, I didn’t want to talk to
anybody. Turns out, this is the basic test to know whether you’re introverted or
extroverted. Does being around people and talking to them all day leave you drained or
energized? If you get energized, you’re an extrovert.

I was not an extrovert.

This gave me serious doubts on how successful I’d be at selling.

Luckily, I found there’s no feeling like your first sale. It took me 3 days and knocking on
probably 500 doors before I had mine. Those aren’t exactly the best numbers, but man I
was over the moon.

At last, a sale! $500 for 3 days of just talking to people? No hard labor? No
slaving away in a cubicle?

“Why didn’t I start this years ago!?”

 I figured the better I got, the more sales I would make. Soon I’d be making more money
than a doctor!

Sales hooked me instantly. Making the sale was a big rush. It still is.

At the time, I was living with family in Wasaga beach, but I decided to move to Barrie.

It’s a lot closer to Toronto and it reminded me a lot of Halifax because it’s right on the
water.
There I could be closer to the head office, it wasn’t enormous like Toronto, plus my
company told me they would be opening an office there soon.

Within a month of working for the solar panel company, I sold 12 units and
earned a “lofty” commission check for $4500. I’ve never made that much money
working in Halifax. It was hard, but I thought it was pretty cool to make that much
money.

Unfortunately, the company only paid me $250 of the $4500. That, plus my manager in
Barrie telling me he was moving to Thailand put me in a tight spot.

I had no way down to the Toronto office for our Monday morning meetings and I had no
money to pay my rent, besides what I had saved up while still in school. Most of those
savings I had blew through over the 3 jobless months.

Needless to say, I had to find another job immediately. A funny thing happens
when you have door to door sales experience on your resume. You become a prime
target for other companies that sell door to door. Another “marketing” company
reached out to me to sell fiber optic tv and internet for them the same day I put my
resume on the job sites.

After being burned I was cynical about the whole door to door thing, but I also
needed to eat, so I decided to give them a shot.

In Canada, there are two main providers of cable and internet, like Verizon and AT&T in
the United States. My new company was basically an affiliate for one of the two main
providers.

What I found out was, people either LOVED our provider or HATED them. There was no
in between.

I never experienced so much rejection and outright anger before. It was

miserable working for those guys. The selling job itself was no easier than selling the
solar panels, I was definitely NOT passionate about TV or internet, and the commission
was WAY less now at $127 per sale.
By this time, it was well into January and I was out until 9 PM every night, knocking on
doors, freezing my ass off, and wondering how it came to this.

...The one thing I still had going for me was the habit of reading. Every chance I got, I
would be reading a new book on sales or marketing to try to get a slight edge. If I
thought a book would make selling easier, I’d buy it.

In my hope to find the secret to easy sales, I came across a book that introduced
me to an entire world I knew nothing about.

What is this world, you ask? It’s something called direct response marketing and
copywriting.
Direct response marketing means people read your ad and they’re compelled to
respond right away. Copywriting is the skill of writing the ads which get people to buy
from you. Not to be confused with copyrights which involves protecting your intellectual
property.

Apparently, it was possible to have qualified prospects come to you, ready to buy after
they read your sales letter or watch your sales video.

All you had to do was put the right ad in front of the right person.
This wasn’t the type of advertising they teach you in school, but it seemed to be the
answer I was looking for. Despite having no clue how it worked, somehow, I knew
learning copywriting and direct response marketing would be my ticket to freedom.

I was about 6 months into door to door selling now, at my lowest point. I felt like a
complete failure and constantly questioned my sanity for moving halfway across the
country to do this job. After all, I was an engineer! (I still had not embraced selling).

Sales weren’t coming in, I had completely blown through my savings, and by my
calculations, I had to sell 5 more “triples” (tv, internet and home phone) just to be able to
pay my rent the next week.

I figured my only hope was to implement what I learned about writing sales letters. So I
went to my boss all excited about it and asked if I would be able to write a simple sales
letter to send out to a list of prospects.

I explained if I sent 1000 sales letters and only 1% responded, that would be 10
sales or $1270. A return on investment of almost 1000%. I would write the letter and
print off the 1000 copies of the sales letter and even pay the mailing expenses

Since he got around $27 per sale anyway, I figured he would agree since he had
nothing to lose.
He turned me down.

“Ben, we’re a door to door sales company, we don’t do that”.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I decided it was time to move on.
That turned out to be good timing because the office shut down a few weeks later.

From there I ended up moving back in with my family with my tail between my legs. I felt
like the sales game beat me into the dirt, but now I was onto something that would
change everything.
Within a few months, the skills I picked up from studying copywriting and direct
response marketing had a much greater impact on my selling ability than any traditional
methods I was taught.
As I later found out, those sales “skills” were outdated, sleazy pressure tactics
which both the prospects and I hated.

Most of the sales books I read focused on closing techniques, positive mindset, and
working yourself to the bone.
Almost nobody explained that closing was easy if you do the job leading up to the
sale right. The sales gurus also left out the smart way to leverage your time which
makes prospecting and pitching unnecessary.

I decided to move back to Halifax where my friends and family were and focus on my
newfound direct response marketing skills full time.

That was a few years ago.

Since then I’ve come to fully embrace selling as a way of life. I know no value is
created if no sale gets made. If you try to give people advice they don’t pay for, they
don’t pay attention. If you try to give “value” to people, it bores them.

Now I still sell everyday, except I don’t chase after prospects, they come to me.

In fact, they come to me knowing my whole story, why they need my service over
anyone else's, how much I charge, and what my sales process is. That makes selling
1000 times easier than the way we were doing it before, like “walking talking human
spam”.

You see, it turns out just about everything I was taught about sales was not true. I had
to unlearn most of it because it was completely counter productive to my success.

Sales isn’t about pressuring people and beating every objection until they have no
choice but to buy.
If you do your job right, you’ll be talking to someone predisposed to buy from you
because they have a certain pain or desire.

At that point sales becomes very easy.

All you need to do is overcome their resistance to buying something they know is in
their best interests.

Time to Stop Sniffing Your Favorite Sales Trainers Glue

Looky, if you want to get ahead in your career, it’s time we start butchering some sacred
“cows” of the sales world.
I’m talking about the false mindsets, dogma, and “wisdom” being spread around like the
flu.

Like “Always be closing!”, “Hustle!”, being a smooth talker, being overly enthusiastic or
even worse, be passionate about your product.

We’ll also dispel the myths about positive thinking your way to success, not wanting to
“inconvenience” people, goal setting, plus some costly false beliefs about putting
pressure on people.

Ready to get started? Let’s jump right into it.

The 7 biggest sales myths.

Myth #1: Always be closing

Every new salesperson learns “The “ABC’s of sales”, always be closing! On the surface,
it makes a ton of sense, right?

Fact: As commissioned sales people, we only get paid when we close a sale.
Common sense tells you this means you need to spend all your time closing prospects,
making sales.

And I used to follow this “common sense” thinking... Trying to close every person I came
across. After all, that’s what all the classic sales books told me to do.

Have you ever heard this saying?

“if you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to nobody.”

That applies directly to sales. In fact, it’s one of the most important things that changed
my ability to sell.
See, what I learned from the internet marketing wizard Perry Marshall is the power of
disqualification.

Perry says Sales and Marketing is an elimination process, not a convincing process.
When I first heard that, I didn’t really understand what he meant. Everything I heard told
me selling was all about convincing and persuading people.

Well, Perry wrote a book called 80/20 sales and marketing which is all about the Pareto
Principle. I first heard of the Pareto Principle when I was still in school for engineering…

If you’ve never heard of it, basically an Italian economist made an important discovery
for people in sales over 100 years ago.

He found that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the population. Upon further
investigation, he realized 80% of the traffic on the roads was on 20% of the roads. For
business owners, 80% of their income came from 20% of their best customers.

How does this apply to “Always be closing”?

Well, every customer is worth a different amount to businesses. Some are “whales” who
generate 80% of the income for your business. Some are “minnows” who take up the
same amount of your time, but either are a headache, don’t buy as much, or even at all.

You create a lot more freedom and income by only attracting the whales.

If you go treating the minnows like they’re whales, you’ll be making your sales job much
harder than it should be.

There are 5 “power disqualifiers” I learned from Perry. You can adapt them to your
business too, or make your own. If your prospects don’t fit these 5 criteria, it’s usually
best to not sell to them.

1. Do they have money?

2. Are they capable of making a buying decision?
3. Do they have an urgent problem your product solves? (Perry calls this a
bleeding neck).
4. Do they buy into your unique selling proposition?
5. Does buying your product fit into their overall plan?

*Google Perry Marshall 5 disqualifiers to read his blog, he can explain these much
better than me. Do it after you read this book though ;)

Your first goal is to eliminate as many prospects quickly and efficiently as possible using
disqualifying questions that make sense for your business.

Always be Disqualifying should be your new motto.

Okay Ben, that makes sense...But what about after I do that?
...I still have to close the people who are the right fit for my product, right?

Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.

Now that you’ve identified the 20% of your leads who will make you 80% of your
income, it’s still not time to “always be closing”.

Remember, you went through a lot of trouble and spent good money to narrow your list
of prospects down to these folks. It’s time to hang back a minute.

Let’s switch from selling to dating for a second.

What you’ve done is met a girl, met for coffee and determined you’re a good fit for each
other. If you go for the close right now, its like you’re asking her to marry you.

That’s almost always just gonna turn her off, and then you’re back to “hunting mode”.

Look, I’m not sure what you’re selling, but if you constantly have to seek new prospects
and make new sales, you should really consider this next statement...
The real money is in repeat business. You want to be selling something you can
sell once and get paid for again and again ideally.

Switch your thinking to lifetime value. Even if you’re selling a one-time transaction,
there are ways to increase the lifetime value of your clients.

You could promote not competing offers to your prospects, you could systematically
increase the number of referrals they give you by giving them incentives, and so on.

Either way, you need to start thinking about building relationships, not one-night stands
(To take it back to the dating analogies).

Lifetime customer value means analyzing how much money your prospects will spend
with you over the next 6 months, one year, 5 years, and so on.

Note: Make sure you’re calculating the average and worst case life time values, so you
have a more accurate number.

If you think of relationship building instead of “one off sale”, you’ll naturally approach
every selling situation differently.

Here’s the most essential mindset tweak that will help you make sales the right way.

Give people the opportunity to buy from you, don’t try to “sell them”.
To bring it back to dating, give the girl or guy the opportunity to meet you for coffee. You
don’t NEED them to go out with you.

Anyway,

You’ll be surprised how easy selling is if you just put the right offer in front of the right
prospect and make it easy to buy.

There’s one book which more than any other changed my approach to selling. Funny
enough, it wasn’t a sales book at all, but negotiation.

It’s called “Start with No” by the late Jim Camp.

He was known as the world’s most feared negotiator. During his career, Jim dealt with
the biggest companies in the world. Negotiating deals with hundreds of millions if not
billions of dollars at stake.

Throughout this book I’ll be referencing back to techniques and principles Jim Camp
taught about negotiation which apply directly to selling too.

His most essential principle is where this rule of giving people the opportunity to buy
rather than forcing them came from.

You see, there’s a certain dynamic in the buyer seller relationship. Usually, the seller is
the one who chasing buyers. The seller usually needs the buyer because that’s how he
gets paid.

Ever since we were living in caves and chasing dinosaurs for breakfast, humans have
been programmed with the following command.

Flee from what chases us.

Therefore, if you’re constantly trying to close your prospect, trying to convince them why
they should buy, their guard will stay up.

Subconsciously, they’ll be thinking “If your product is so good, why are you trying so
hard to sell it to me?

On the other hand, if you’re consistently following up and inviting them to buy, it’s a
completely different dynamic.

A final note on eliminating any lingering signs of neediness and confidence…

In my experience, the best way to become confident is to have options.

For example, if you’re constantly worried about losing your job, you won’t be confident.
But if you’re an entrepreneur with multiple clients, losing one won’t make or break you.

In sales jargon, confidence and non-neediness comes from keeping your pipeline full.
After all, the most powerful position to have in any negotiation is the ability to walk
away.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to starve your neediness to death. This is the
underlying principle behind all of Jim Camp’s teachings.

Which leads directly to the next mindset shift…

Myth #2: You must pressure people to buy.

When I was still selling door to door, I was taught to apply sales pressure. I was taught
to ask the right questions to get “yes” momentum so they’ll have to buy and to also
answer every objection until they had no choice but to buy.

On top of that, we were taught the 4 “selling impulses”.

1. Fear of Loss
2. The “Jones Effect” (We want what our neighbours have)
3. Urgency
4. Indifference

They’re very effective, but not the way we were taught to use them.

See, using these manipulative pressure tactics to get a yes always made me squirm on
the inside. I personally hate when telemarketers and door to door salesmen try to force
me to say yes, I can only assume every other person being sold this way feels the
same.

This brings us to another Jim Camp-ism, giving your prospect the opportunity to say
no.
See, before Jim was the world’s most feared negotiator, he had a door to door sales job
like me selling water softeners.

What he found is that despite what anyone tells you, there’s no way you can control
whether someone buys from you or not. All you can control is your actions.

Jim discovered when he opened the sales conversation by inviting the prospect to say
no right away, this eliminated all the “negative pressure” and let them take their guard
down.

Selling pressure IS a good thing, the caveat is the pressure should only be to
make a yes or a no decision.
Because every sales pro knows how annoying it is to get a “maybe”.

What you want to do then is to tell the prospect right from the start that you’ll be asking
them a few questions. From there, if they’re a good fit for your service you will invite
them to buy, but there’s no pressure to say yes.

THEN you can start using the 4 selling impulses.

Time to turn the next two sacred cows into holy hamburgers…

Myth #3: Passion and Enthusiasm.

In my experience, it’s been universally taught since the dawn of time that the salesman
or woman MUST be enthusiastic and passionate about their product.

People have accepted this without question for ages.

Of course I need to be passionate about what I’m selling! It makes a lot of sense.

Let me explain why they’re both costing you thousands of dollars in sales every day.

There’s a reason why we hate virtually all advertising...

It’s the same reason why most sales people’s pitches fall on deaf ears. Just realizing
and implementing this one truth will make you 1000 times more effective.

Ready for it?

The most common mistake they make is they start the conversation talking about their
product or solution.

What should they do instead?

Talk about the prospect!

Their problems, fears, frustrations, pains, confusion, as well as their hopes and dreams.

As the saying goes, the way to become interesting to others is to be interested.

This is true because we only care about ourselves. It sounds wrong, but it’s 100% true.

The faster you accept reality as it is rather than how you want it to be, the more sales
you’ll make.
I’ve studied the greatest salesmen and copywriters of all time and what the best of the
best have in common is they understand their prospects.

In particular, they know their prospects expect the salesmen to be enthusiastic about
his product, even hypey.

That’s why it’s so important to keep your enthusiasm bottled up on the inside when
you’re talking to prospects.
This goes against all common wisdom, but I found if you follow what everybody else is
doing you’ll get the same results as them.

If you want to be enthusiastic about something, be enthusiastic about discovering what

your prospect truly cares about.

What about passion? Should you be passionate about your product?

Maybe. But it won’t help you win any more sales.

What’s better? Selling something your prospect is passionate about.

Take golf nuts. Those guys will spend a small fortune on golf trips, new clubs,
expensive golf club memberships, and coaching.

We copywriters have a saying. You don’t want to sell ice to eskimos, you want to sell
kegs to frat boys. Sell water to a thirsty man in the desert. Crack to crackheads.

(Disclaimer alert: This is an example. Do not actually start selling hard drugs, it’s illegal
and looked down upon)

Just to beat a dead horse into glue...Even if you had the most amazing persuasion skills
and you could sell ice to eskimos, you wouldn’t get repeat customers, it would be very
hard, AND time consuming.

Your job of selling is infinitely easier when you’re selling to addicts with money, or
people with urgent bleeding neck problems (remember the 5 power disqualifiers).

This is a “writer-downer”:

What makes people passionate? Problems or desires.

To sum up, keep your enthusiasm to yourself, talk to your prospects about their
problems before your solution, and sell to irrationally passionate people.

Your passion can come in handy.

It can help you identify other people who are passionate about the same thing as you
and willing to pay for products related to it. Information products in particular. Then you
can create a product to sell to them.

To wrap up this section, it really does help to have absolute 100% conviction in what
you’re selling. You must believe 100% in your product or else you won’t promote it as
much as you should and you’ll give up faster than you should.

In B2B sales, you’re often selling certainty first and foremost.

I heard a funny line in a movie that reminds me of this.

“I’m so stupid, but I just act confident and people follow me”

There’s a lot of truth to that statement. Even if you’re a total moron, you can still make a
lot of money. There’s hope for you!

Moving right along, the next dumb myth is…

Myth 4: You need to “hustle” and grind non-stop.

Before you close this book and demand a refund, let me explain.

Peter Drucker was a famous and highly respected business thought leader.

One of his well-known quotes is “there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently

that which should not be done at all”

Let’s rap about efficiency versus effectiveness.

Pretend I became the world’s best door to door salesmen.

Imagine my close rate was 100%. Every door I knocked on, they couldn’t help but buy
from me.

Say the typical sales conversation took 30 minutes. That means in a 12-hour day I’d sell
24 units. Let’s be honest, if I was selling this much I would only work 6-8 hours because
I’d be raking it in unless it was very low commission items.

Anyway, you would say 24 sales a day is pretty good. By the way, you can insert any
number for how much commissions are, it doesn’t matter in this example.

The thing is, I’m still limited by my time and energy. I became super efficient at a very
uneffective task.
Suppose on the other hand I wrote a direct response style sales letter that converted
(sold) 1% of the people I sent it to. A realistic, albeit low percentage. Typically, direct
mail converts cold prospects into leads or buyers between 1-6%.

If I sent that same letter to 10,000 people that’s 100 sales a day. I created much more
leverage with my time and energy.

I only had to write that sales letter once. I can get a mailing house to do the work of
printing it, packing the envelopes, and mailing it. It’s even easier on the internet.

I could be VERY inefficient at this process and only get a .5% conversion, that’s still 50
sales. Twice as much as I could make if I were the best salesman in the entire world.

This is much more effective.

Granted, it takes an initial investment to pay for advertising and all that, so you can
argue that point.

Just to drive the point home about hard work even further, let’s say all you have to do to
become successful is out-work everyone.

You’re ignoring history my friend.

Don’t you know what caused the powerful Neanderthals to get wiped out by us puny
hoo-mans?

It wasn’t JUST our brains. We used those powerful noggins of ours to create tools.

Tools create leverage. They multiply our effort and energy. That’s what they do.

If you want to hustle and row across the ocean, that’s fine. I’d rather take a plane, or a
motor boat.

If you want to chop a tree down with your hand, go for it. I’d rather use a chain saw.

Want one more? Okay.

There’s a classic scene in one of the Indiana Jones movies where he goes up against a
master swordsman. This guy whips out his sword and he’s swinging it around all over
the place. It looks pretty badass.

Until Indy takes out his revolver and shoots him dead.

If you want to make more money, you need to use tools too.
There are all kinds of ways to automate your prospecting, your presentations, your
closing and follow up.

I’ll get into a few of them later.

But first, we have more myths to terminate with extreme prejudice.

Have you ever heard this?

,
Myth #5: “You have to be a smooth talker”

The most common stereotype for salesmen is the fast talkin, hair slicked back car
salesman. This is the guy who has an answer for every objection, knows the 300
closes, and all the “NLP” tactics.

When I first got into selling, I stumbled over my words so much I thought it was the
reason I never sold anything.

The solution? Practice my pitch hundreds of times and do “practice pitches” every day
with my teammates.

I was determined to never be at a loss for words again. I had an answer to every
objection locked and loaded. I rehearsed my rebuttals day in and day out.

Naturally when I still couldn’t make sales, I thought my problem was with my pitch.
Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t. Honestly, I had no idea what I was
doing wrong.

Coming back to “Start with No” again by Jim Camp, he tells his story of door to door
selling.

For the first 3 weeks, he did the same thing as me. Every door he knocked on he would
give them his canned pitch and every time he would get the door slammed right in his
face.

For the first 3 weeks, he made zero sales.

It takes guts to go three weeks without sales.

Anyway, this losing streak went on until he decided to “ditch the pitch”.

Instead of the canned pitch his trainers taught him, he asked the homeowners a simple
question about their water softeners.

He said, “Hey I’m Jim and I’m selling water softeners, I’m not sure if you need them or
not, but I’m wondering “How is your hair?” Does your water make your hair dry?”
That literally got him “in the door” and increased his close rate to 30% of the people he
spoke to.

Let me unpack that little “opener” for you.

1. He asked a question.
2. He got “into their world” by mentioning a specific problem they’re having which
his product can solve.
3. He gave them an out right away. He invited them to tell him no.
4. He created “vision” of a problem by asking about their hair. Another essential
camp-ism is you can’t convince people to do anything, you can only create a
vision of the problem which makes them convince themselves.

These are 4 principles of Jim Camps negotiating system and they all apply heavily to
selling.

The real reason you don’t have to be an amazing outgoing speaker to be a rockstar at
sales goes back to another old quote related with asking questions...

...Before I tell you the quote, I know how we tend to read books full of information and
not really know what to focus on.

This is another “writer downer”. It’s a key takeaway that has made me a much more
effective salesman.

And I guarantee you will say “oh I already know that.”

Let me tell you there’s a humongous difference between knowing and doing.

The quote is this: You have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

Hammer this into your brain.

The real money in selling comes from asking questions and listening.

This isn’t a “sexy new sales technique” by any stretch of the imagination. It’s as old as
dirt… because it works.

If you want a technique, try this.

Step 1) Ask questions

Step 2) Listen to the answer
Step 3) Repeat what they said back to them.
Step 4) When they’re finally interested in learning what you have to sell, tailor your pitch
to what they said.
Oops, I’m getting ahead of myself with techniques here, let’s go back to busting myths.

Remember in my story how I practically ran away from the little boy who answered the
first door I knocked on?

Do you know why that happened?

I’ll tell you, it’s not because I’m scared of talking to strangers, or that I’m more of an
introvert than an extrovert, or little boys freak me out...

Nah, the reason that happened is because one of my deeply held limiting beliefs about
selling.

See, I believed at my core that selling was bothering people.

More importantly, I didn’t have 100% belief in what I was selling.

This belief manifested itself in all sorts of ugly ways.

I apologized for inconveniencing people all the time.

I didn’t go for the close even when people were giving me all the buying signs because I
didn’t want them to feel pressured to buy.

Even when they clearly had a need for my product.

I was constantly looking for a way to “sell without selling”.

All this put unnecessary pressure on me because I was really torn inside. I knew I
needed to make sales to get paid, but more often than not I avoided closing people who
should have been closed.

Now I see this behavior all the time, especially with email marketers. I’m going to give
you the medicine in just a few minutes, so hang in there.

Imagine for a moment you were walking home after dark in a rough part of town.

Next thing you know a crazy looking psycho appears out of the shadows and he has a
knife.

This thug demands your wallet. Since you don’t like being stabbed, you hand the wallet
over.
Of course, this isn’t your ordinary psycho. This freak is high on meth, so he stabs you a
few times before disappearing into the night.
What if the emergency room doctor behaved like I did? Afraid of “being salesy”.

There you are, bleeding all over the place (you might literally have a bleeding neck).
And your doctor won’t give you treatment because he doesn’t want you to feel
pressured.

Even as you are literally about to bleed out and die, that doctor being so selfishly
concerned about himself, doesn’t want to pressure you into the operation.

Listen, if you’ve done your job right of disqualifying all the bad prospects, that leaves
you with people who urgently need you to solve their problem.

After all, money only changes hands when you solve a problem.

If you have a good product…and you don’t do your very best to show your prospects
how you can solve their urgent problem with it, you might be better suited flipping
burgers.

Never be afraid of making sales, it holds the key to your financial future.

Fear of sales puts unnecessary pressure on yourself.

Contrary to popular belief, putting pressure on yourself does NOT help you sell better.

This includes setting sales goals too. Why? Because it makes you focus on things not
under your control.

You want to make yourself as relaxed as possible when you’re going into a sales
situation.
One technique that really helped me is called the “Theatre of the Mind”. I learned it from
the book Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and Dan Kennedy.

The technique involves vividly picturing yourself talking to the prospect, asking them
questions, presenting your product, answering their questions, and closing the sale.

The idea is you rehearse the entire scenario in your head and when the time comes to
talk to the prospect, you just “execute the program”.
It might be a little “woo-woo” but it works for me, I’d suggest reading the book and trying
it for yourself.

Now the theatre of the mind has absolutely nothing to do with this next myth.

Myth 6: You just need to “Think Positive.”

If there ever was one universal misunderstood belief in sales and the “success” culture,
it’s this.

Just think positive!

If you ask any high performing guy or gal what book had the most impact on them, they
almost always say the same thing.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Now I’m going to go ahead and ignore the staggeringly high amount of evidence proving
Hill was a total scam.
Go ahead and Google it if you like. The evidence is there for all to see.

I have a personal vendetta against people preaching positive thinking, affirmations,

manifestation, and law of attraction type stuff.

Why? Well these people are spreading the idea that success in sales comes from just
being positive all the time.

Imagine you were secretly watching a door to door salesmen walk up to your door from
your window.

What if he started giving himself a pep talk on your front porch before ringing your
doorbell and you overheard it.

“They’re going to buy today”

“They’re going to buy today”
“They’re going to buy today”.

“I’m visualizing this homeowner buying from me. I’m manifesting the feeling of having a
sale from this person. I am the greatest salesman in the world and I’m going to prove it
today, tomorrow and the next day!”

Before you say it,

I realize I spoke about visualizing earlier with the theatre of the mind technique.
There’s a big difference.

The theatre of the mind technique is all about relaxing yourself and getting mentally
prepared.

On the other hand, the positive thinking type of visualization is all about putting good
vibes into the universe and hopefully reaping the rewards...
Here’s my big problem with visualization.

Most people use it as a substitute for action.

Or even worse, they believe visualization itself is all they need to be successful.

Visualization in my not so humble opinion is how you bridge the gap from where you are
to where you want to be. If it’s outside of your reality to have a 6 pack, cold call, or drive
a golf ball 400 yards, first you should vividly imagine it happening.

Just like how Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile. Until that point, nobody thought
it was possible. After Roger broke it, tons of other people managed to break it too.

Anyway, would you even answer the door if you heard that joker saying how you’re
going to buy from him today? No.

All the positive thinking in the world is no substitute for one of Napoleon Hill's lesser
known laws of success - Accurate thinking.

Accurate thinking is accepting reality as how it is, not how you want it to be.

If you’re trying to sell me something I either don’t want, can’t afford, or I don’t believe
your claims, you can be a 12th degree Zen master manifestor and I still won’t buy from
you.

Positive thinking alone cannot bring you sales success.

Positive thinking will help you stay persistent when the hard times come, which they will.

Positive thinking will help you when your friends and family criticize your choice of
career, which they will.

Positive thinking will make you a better person to be around.

...But only accurate thinking will make you successful at selling.

There’s a simple mindset shift I learned from a great copywriter from Australia named
Pete Godfrey. He’s a big believer in recording, not judging.

Record not judge means seeing what people REALLY respond to, what REALLY works
in business and most importantly what does not work.

Here’s one last myth I thought I’d address.

Myth 7: Saying whatever it takes to get the sale

Thanks to this myth alone, salesmen have the unfortunate reputation of saying
anything to make the sale.

Including lying.

In fact, when I first began selling I was so eager to become successful I would say
anything to win the sale. I told myself “I’m not lying, I’m just not telling the whole truth”.

Usually this was around my lack of product knowledge. I would just tell the prospect “oh
yeah, this product does that.”

...It almost always came back to bite me in the ass.

I’m not saying I’m Benjamin Franklin and I can never tell a lie, but I’ve always prided
myself on my honesty. Maybe lying didn’t work for me because I was bad at it.

Anyway, one of the most important principles which leads to success is honesty.

Especially in sales.

This goes back to what I said about being overly enthusiastic. Your prospects are fully
expecting you to exaggerate and make over the top claims about how great your
product is.

They are fully expecting you to push all their “hot buttons” until they get so excited they
HAVE to buy.

As a principle, I not only tell my prospects if they’re NOT a good fit for my products or
services (remember the disqualifying questions), I’ll also tell them exactly what’s wrong
with my product.

Copywriters have a term for this: Damaging Omission.

My goal is to keep their emotions as close to neutral as possible because that’s what
makes deals last. If I sense my prospect is starting to become overly positive, I’ll reel
them back in. Same as if they start getting too negative.

That’s how you make sales stick and drastically reduce your refunds.

Remember, honesty and integrity are the foundation of any human relationship. If it’s
true for your personal relationships, it’s also true for your professional relationships.

The legendary marketer Jay Abraham talks about his “Theory of Pre-eminence”. It’s all
about bringing your clients under your protection. Remember, we’re in the lifetime
customer value business.
The Ultimate Selling Secret

One thing I always hear come up in sales is what’s the secret to it? How can I sell
more?

How can I sell anything to anyone?

Ah, this is the ultimate selling secret.

The ark of the sales covenant…
The most closely guarded secret of the world’s most persuasive salesmen…

You want to know who you should study to become world class at sales?
...It’s not your flavor of the month sales guru.

I learned this secret when I was about 7 years old... However, for some reason it didn’t
click for me when I began selling door to door.

(Often you have to re-learn the most valuable lessons over and over again. In fact, I
read every book at least twice. The good ones I read at least 10 times.)

As I mentioned earlier, I’m from Halifax. We’re right on the Atlantic Ocean, waaay east
of Toronto. When I was living in Toronto, most people thought everybody living east of
Montreal was a lobster fisherman.
Not true, I fished for all kinds of other types of fish too.

Anyway…

After school as a kid I would take the ferry across the harbor from Dartmouth to Halifax.
An interesting fact about Halifax is it’s one of the oldest towns in North America. It’s full
of history. It’s also filled with 250 years of sewage.

That didn’t deter 7-year-old Ben from fishing though. I would come over with my little
fishing rod and tackle box and cast my line right off the pier next to the ferry terminal.
(Probably the most polluted spot in the harbor.)

...But I wasn’t the only one fishing there either. There were a few grizzled veterans who
always seemed to be there. I hope they weren’t eating the fish they caught - even I
knew better back then.

Anywho, when I first started fishing, I didn’t catch a thing. In fact, I barely got a nibble.
One of the older vets must have took pity on me because he could see I was stubbornly
persistent even as a kid.

See, back then I had all kinds of cool types of bait. I had these green little things that
looked like minnows. In my young mind, I thought these would be irresistible to the fish
I was going after… I also had these gummy worm looking things and a yellow lure that
looked like a torpedo..

Plus, I had all the right gear. A pretty cool fishing rod with the latest and greatest
advancements in fishing technology, a bunch of those little bobber things, and I even
used a special type of line that was supposed to be unbreakable.

Those fish had no chance! Or so I thought...

Clearly, I had given myself every advantage to catch those fish, except the one most
important one of all…

I didn’t use the bait the fish liked!

See, every advantage in the world won’t make the fish take the bait if it’s not compelled
to do so.
I could use the ultimate fishing technique, the best equipment, and be fishing in a spot
packed to the gills with fish. Nothing will help if I’m not starting with the fundamentals.

Fishing with the right bait.

The old timers showed me what the fish responded to. Plain old boring worms. Boring to
me, irresistible to the fish.

This translates to selling what people want to buy.

What’s that you ask?

“How do I find out what they already want to buy?”

Ah, now that’s a smart question. I thought you were one smart cookie, looks like I was
right.

There’s a few ways to know exactly what they want. I’ll give you two foolproof methods.

Here’s the first way to find out what people want.

There’s a type of marketing funnel created by a fella named Ryan Levesque called the
“Ask Method”. It’s a complicated way of asking people what they want to buy. It uses all
sorts of email segmentation, “deep dive surveys” and some other complicated techy
stuff.

A bit too advanced for my blood and I’ve gone through engineering.

An easier way to run an “ask funnel” is to just ask people what they’ve bought before
related to your products.
Or, if you have access to a buyers list of people who’ve bought similar products to
yours, you have access to a potential goldmine if you can access them.

Start looking for people who sell complementary products to your ideal customer and try
to form joint ventures with them.

If you sell carpet cleaning, you could look for dry cleaners, landscapers, realtors, and
other people who deal with your target market.

(Here’s a tasty fact, a list of buyers is the most precious asset to any business,
especially those taking part in direct marketing.)

The second method is to just outright ask them…

What they want, what they don’t want, what problems they have, and a few other
questions to figure out what their motivation is.

One book that made the process of selling crystal clear was “The Secret of Selling
Anything” by the late Harry Browne.

(You can find a free pdf by Googling it).

Harry Browne was a rockstar of selling. He was almost elected President around 1996-
2000. Before that he was a top salesman making an unusually good income while only
working 15 to 20 hours a week.

Harry said he never wanted to be an average salesman, so he paid close attention to

the top performers in his industry.

In his book, he listed out...

The 5 steps of selling anything to anyone.

His first and most important step is that everyone is already motivated to solve a
problem or fulfill some need. You don’t need to motivate anyone.

Like the fish, they will automatically go for the bait which compels them. You just need
to ask questions and find out what uniquely motivates your prospects and show them
how to get it.

The mistake most salespeople make is ignoring how your prospect is literally telling
you how they can be sold.
Dig on this, 99.9% of people will gladly tell you what motivates them. However,
most people are so bad at listening, it goes in one ear and out the other.
You need to train yourself to empty out your mind of any preconceived notion and focus
only on what they’re telling you, as well as what they’re not telling you.

Step 1 is all about asking questions to gather information.

Here’s a classic example.

Years ago, Fred Herman who was known as America’s Greatest Salesman appeared
on the Johnny Carson show.

A few minutes into the interview, Johnny said, “Okay, you’re supposed to be a good
salesman. Sell me something.”

Fred said, “Okay Johnny, what would you like me to sell you?”

Back in those days, Johnny had a big ashtray on his desk and his guests routinely
smoked on the show.

Johnny told him, “Sell me this ashtray”.

“Okay Johnny, I’m not sure if I can sell it to you, but I’ll try”. Then Fred took possession
of the ashtray.

Then Fred asked Johnny “I’m not sure I can sell you this, but why might you want to
own an ashtray like this?”

Johnny replied, “Well I like to smoke on the show and I need a place to ash my
cigarettes.”

Fred nodded and replied, “And in addition to that?”

Johnny thought for a second and said, “Well, a lot of my guests get nervous in front of a
big crowd like this, plus being on my show in front of America. Smoking helps them
relax and it ends up in a better interview.”

Fred believed the first reason a prospect gives you is always the “surface reason” and
the way to get to their true motivation is to ask if there’s anything in addition to that.

From there, Fred simply stated, “It sounds like having an ashtray is very important to
you. How much would you be willing to pay for it?”

To which Johnny replied, “Oh I don’t know, 25 cents?”

Fred told him, “Okay Johnny, I’ll let you have it for that.” And he sold him his own
ashtray.
Once you find out their unique motivation…

Step 2 is to summarize your prospects motivation back to them and confirming that’s
what they really want. Just like how Fred confirmed that having an ashtray sounds like
it’s very important to Johnny.

Not only is this smart because you reinforce what they want in both yours and the
prospects mind, you’re really giving them something everyone craves.

And what do we crave? Undivided attention.

Don’t believe me? Think in your own life, when you talk to your friend, family, wife or
kids, do they stop and give you their full attention every time? What about your
coworkers? Your boss? Maybe your employees?

I’m guessing they don’t.

They’re probably looking at their phones, tablet, playing games, or watching TV. In other
words, multitasking. It reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield’s classic bit about not getting
any respect. Everyone you talk to feels like Rodney on the inside, at least a little bit.

Just think, psychiatrists are paid handsomely to sit and listen to their patient’s problems
and ask them questions.

From now on, consider yourself a sales psychiatrist first. Once you’ve determined
exactly what motivates your prospects and you’ve relayed it back to them, only then do
you go on to step 3.

Step 3 is to tailor your entire presentation to explaining how your product or service
helps them satisfy their unique motivation. I once heard a fascinating quote by Robert
Pittman, the creator of MTV and a multi millionaire.

Robert said, “You can’t convince anyone to buy, all you can do is explain to them
exactly how your product solves their problem.”

This fits right in with Jim Camp’s principle.

“You can’t convince people to buy, you can only create a vision of their problem
and tell them how your product solves it”.

The mistake most salespeople make when they’re doing their presentations is forgetting
what your prospects told them in step 1 and 2 and talking about irrelevant benefits to
the prospect.

For instance, let’s say you’re trying to sell me on a trip to Mexico.

You might ask me what I want in a resort.

Suppose I tell you the most important 3 things for me is access to great snorkeling and
fishing, a 24/7 open bar, and no kids running around.

I just told you exactly how to sell me, in fact, I don’t want to hear anything else besides
those 3 criteria.

Yet most rookies will go off talking about the excursions available, the amazing nightlife,
how many restaurants there are, or just the price of the trip.

...Notice I said NOTHING about the price in my 3 criteria, yet most salespeople will sell
primarily on price in their presentations. That’s an expensive mistake.

In fact, if you satisfy my 3 criteria, in all likelihood, price will be irrelevant to me. Because
I clearly value a vacation more than the money it costs me, price is not my deciding
factor.

When I was going to school for engineering, I lived with a car salesman. I remember my
disbelief when he told me how price was the 16th factor people took into consideration
when shopping for a new car.

Since I was studying engineering and a lot of investing, it didn’t make any sense to me
at the time.

But it’s true. It’s a costly mistake thinking everyone else buys on the same criteria as
you.

So, the lesson for step 3 is tailoring your presentation to the motivation of your prospect.
And talking about nothing else.

Naturally this means you must to ignore certain aspects of your product or service. This
also means you can’t have a canned pitch for every prospect.

Granted, this method requires a little more brain power in terms of critical thinking, but
it’s much easier than remembering a canned pitch which won’t sell anyway.

Remember, above all the most important part is listening. (You did write that down
earlier, didn’t you?)

Step 4 is to answer their questions.

Harry’s thought on objections was they’re simply questions you haven’t answered yet. If
you’re talking about the prospects motivations, explaining how your product helps them
achieve their motivations, closing becomes easy.

Your prospect is telling you how to make the sale by the questions they ask. The
biggest mindset shift about objections is to recognize they’re not a threat, but a sign of
interest. This is assuming you’ve done your disqualification job right.

Harry’s simple “objection handling” technique was Listen - Agree - Suggest.

We were taught to use “Feel, Felt, Found”. As in, I see how you feel, A lot of other
people felt the same way, but what they found was bla bla bla.

Feel Felt Found CAN work... but it usually backfires.

Why? Because you’re basically telling people they’re wrong to feel the way they do.

Accurate thinking requires us to accept the following fact as reality.

Whatever your prospect feels and believes may not objectively be true at all, but it’s
100% real to her.
That means you need to treat them as 100% legitimate concerns even if you
know they aren’t.

Persuasion is like Aikido, you’re taking the energy coming at you and redirecting it.
Feel, Felt, Found is like attacking that energy head on with brute force. You don’t want
to threaten your prospect or contradict them in any way.

When you listen to their legitimate concerns, agree with them and validate their feelings
and then suggest an alternative way of looking at it, you can respectfully change
people’s minds.

The key when it comes to suggesting is to give them enough reasons why this is a
better way.

Here are some of the most common objections.

Price, low or high.

Will this work for me? (Everyone thinks their situation is different).
Can I believe you?
Are you trying to trick me?
Is there a better option than this?
Do I need to make a decision today?

Onto Step 5. Close the sale and get paid.

Harry’s book really showed me how closing is actually very easy... if you do the work up
to that point right.
It’s natural. All you’re really doing is encouraging them to do something they already
want to do.

People welcome encouragement to do something they already want to do.

They hate being pressured to do something they don’t want to do.

One of my other mentors Dan Kennedy wrote a great book called No BS Sales Success
in the New Economy.

(I strongly encourage you to read ALL of his books)

In Dan’s book, his “ultimate closing technique” is simply giving the prospect a yes/yes
decision.

Would you like it delivered today or tomorrow?

Do you want the regular or the deluxe?

If you did everything right up until the close, you don’t need 50 closes. Only one.

Remember, it’s important that your prospect makes a yes or no decision. Don’t leave
end the conversation a maybe. Nobody wins with a maybe.

If your prospects are still on the fence, at this point you can start using fear of loss and
urgency.

Give the prospect a 24-hour deadline to make a decision. If they take longer either they
lose a bonus, the price goes up, or the offer disappears.

Just the little push they need.

You’ll know it’s time to close when your prospects have no more questions. Don’t
hesitate to tell them what their next step is.

This wouldn’t be a good sales book without a plethora of “killer techniques”, would it?

Here are 7 strategies and techniques that contributed the most to my success in selling
either in person, on the phone, or with the written word.

7 Unconventional Techniques for Doubling Your Sales

Technique Number One: Learning How to Ask the Right Questions

I can’t stress enough how much I’ve learned from Jim Camp.

Throughout this book I’ve already mentioned a few of his principles. Here’s a brief list of
them.
-Non-neediness
-Inviting your prospect say no
-Staying in their world not yours
-Focusing on your efforts not results
-And asking questions that create vision.

One of the first things I learned about asking questions was the difference between
closed questions and open questions.

Closed questions mean the answer is either yes or no.

Open questions require a bit more effort to answer on the prospects part.

I learned a key distinction from Jim Camp about the way you ask questions.

One way gets your prospect to open-up, the other puts them on the defensive.

Try to catch the difference between these two sets of questions.

Option 1)
Do you have the following problems?
Have you ever wanted to fire your boss?

Option 2)

When was the last time you took a bath?

How many prospects have you presented to this month?

Besides the fact option 1 is closed and option 2 is open, Jim Camp says you should
start all your questions with “interrogatives”, not action based verbs.

If you flunked high school English don’t worry, I’ve got your back.

An interrogative is the type of question journalists are taught to ask in interviews to get
the full story out of people.

Who, what, where, when, why, and how.

Asking questions starting with interrogatives helps bypass your prospects defense.

On the other hand, here are the type of words that cause us to close off…

Do you.
Have you.
Would you
Get it? Good.

Now let’s talk about Discovery Questions and the 3 levels of Persuasion

I recently listened to a podcast with a guy named Jeremy Miner being interviewed.

Jeremy was one of the top earners in the MLM world. He does sales training now, but
before that he was earning 3 million per year as a distributor.

Out of 100 million distributors worldwide, he was ranked 43rd in terms of earnings.

Anyway, Jeremy was talking about his education background in behavioural science
and how it led him to become such a rock star (my words, not his) at selling…

Apparently, behavioural science experts have studied persuasion in depth.

They've scientifically discovered the most persuasive type of communication.

There are 3 levels actually.

The very least persuasive type is telling people what to do.

Like telling people why they should do something. This includes presenting, telling your
story, giving a sales pitch, teaching, putting sales pressure on prospects, and assuming
the sale.

...The people who communicate this way tend to be the ones who only talk about
benefits, benefits, benefits, hypey claims, and their solutions.

Since we live in the age of "post trust" as Jeremy calls it, prospects have grown immune
to this type of communication. They come to expect it and it automatically sets you in
the category of everyone else.

This is the way 99% of sales people get trained to sell and it's been scientifically
proven to be the least persuasive way to sell.

This begs the question, if we KNOW there's a better way, why don't we do something
about it?
My guess? Tradition and stagnation.

The second, more effective level of persuasion according to Jeremy is “when we

interact and discover from each other, like a discussion or a debate.”

Harry Browne might ask something along the following: “I’m not sure if what I have can
help you or not, so do you mind if I ask you a few questions to be sure? Does your
company have <insert topic here>?”
It’s a more Socratic approach to selling. Asking questions which encourage them to
discover our way of thinking for themselves.

That's a powerful step up, but it's still not the pinnacle of persuasiveness.

What's the best you ask?

What does behavioural science deem to be the most effective in terms of selling and
persuading people to do stuff?

The same thing that shot Jeremy Miner straight to the top 1% of the top 1% of earners
in the WORLD for selling?

I could just tell you, but then I would only be persuading you at the lowest level, wouldn’t
I?
Behavioural science says you won't be persuaded to even try this way if I did that.
...I wouldn't be doing you any favors like that, right?

I'll tell you what it involves…

It's all about going deep into your prospects world... Asking questions that create an
emotional response.
With the goal to allow others to persuade themselves. He says that can only happen
through dialogue.

The way to ask those type of questions that create emotion is by going straight to the
core of your prospect.

Here are two rules to follow.

1) Staying within their world.

This means talking about their problems, fears, pain, frustration, confusion, anxiety,
hopes and dreams. Remember, you're never going to be boring to people when you're
in their world.
You want to ask and find out what their problems are, if any.
What’s causing those problems and how are the problems affecting their life?
And most importantly, can your product can actually help them.

2) Asking questions to create vision with them.

This begs the inevitable question of what should you create the vision of?

To answer, I once heard Tony Robbins say at our most basic level, we’re only motivated
by two things:
Avoidance of pain.

And…

The pursuit of pleasure.

Building on this, behavioral scientists identified we are almost twice as motivated to

avoid a loss than we are to receive a gain.

Earlier I said that money only changes hands when you solve another person’s
problem. That problem could be a sore tooth, broken arm, boredom, loneliness, lack of
money, lack of time, and on and on.

In truth, we have a never-ending list of problems, wants, and needs.

Jim Camp said creating a vision of pain, or a problem is the most compelling way
to persuade people.

As an example, imagine you’re selling home security service.

While talking to homeowners, you could share a few horror stories of people who didn’t
have security alarms installed and had their homes broken into.

Or you could show pictures of deranged looking local criminals that have been released
in your area who have a history of breaking into homes.

Really a simple question would be “What would you do if you woke up in the middle of
the night and you heard someone downstairs?”

Your prospects own imagination will do the heavy lifting for you. They will persuade
themselves.

Of course, you can help this process along by painting more vivid details and asking
more detailed questions.

Why is this so effective? Simple.

As we all should know by now, every buying decision is an emotional decision first.
If vision drives decision, then logically vision is what creates emotion too.

Technique Number 2: Crossing the Gap

This next “technique” is powerful for selling either consulting, coaching, or information
products.
Think of before and after photos they use in those late-night infomercials. Right now,
your prospect is the “before” photo and they want to be the after.

Your product is what bridges the gap between those two points. The distance between
those two points, plus how painful being in the “before” point is, dictates how valuable
your product is to them.

Consider a man 200 lbs overweight.

Right now, he wants to drop down to a healthy weight and start growing muscle.

You ask him why? What does it feel like to not lose the weight? What’s the worst part
about it?
Usually, it comes down to his sex life and relationships. (We aren’t very complex).

Then you talk about where he wants to be. Specifically, how much weight does he want
to drop? What would it mean for his life if he could do that? Go into all the “dominoes”
his problem creates in his life.

For instance, he will be healthier, better looking and therefore more confident, if he’s
single, maybe he will find a girlfriend. Maybe he will have energy to play with his kids.

Remember, you’re selling the “after” state. You’re really selling a transformation. A
future.

You help him build the bridge with your product. By going deep into the emotional
reasons why he wants it, he practically sells himself.

Listen, I could have named this book “Find out what people want and show them how to
get it.”

But that wouldn’t have sold very many copies, would it?

Utilizing the gap technique is just another way to approach this idea.

This technique works great for B2B sales too. Let’s say you’re selling marketing
services, something I’m familiar with.

You want to gather all the intel you can on where they are now.

Their monthly sales, their advertising budget, how many new customers they’re getting,
what they’ve tried and what they haven’t. How much are their customers worth in 30
days? What percentage of that value are they willing to spend to acquire a customer?
How much are they spending now to acquire a customer?
Then you find out where their “after” is.

What increase of sales would they be happy with after 1 year? How many customers
does that translate to? What is their motivation for the increase in sales? What would it
mean for their business?

The clearer a picture you can paint, the better it will be for both of you. Both you and the
business owner will see the value of your service.

After doing this, you’ll need to determine what’s holding them back from getting them
there by themselves and you’ll need to gain their commitment to solve this problem.

Next you lay out the plan, how they will get from point A to B.
What is the bridge you will build?

I’m a fan of giving them all the action steps it will take to get them there and simply
asking “would you like help with that?”

In a way, you’re overwhelming them with information, but you’re giving them a lot of
value by getting them clear on their goals plus laying out the steps to get there.

The best part about this technique is you don’t need to memorize an elaborate pitch.
You just need to ask them questions until they sell themselves.

Technique Number 3: Storytelling

Storytelling is so important for selling, it’s really one of THE skills you should focus on
mastering. It’s something I covered extensively on my blog and in my paid copywriting
course, but I’ll outline some of the advantages and techniques here.

Why should you learn storytelling?

Whenever you’re talking to someone and you can tell they’re starting to get distracted,
you just say “this reminds me of a story” and you’ll see them snap to attention.

There’s a neurological reason for this.

See, Humans communicated and passed on valuable information by story alone since
we’ve been living in caves. The invention of writing is relatively new in our history.

We’re hardwired to pay attention to stories. We gladly spend our spare time consuming
stories on TV, at the movie theatres, in books, on social media, and in person.
I once read of a native American tribe who passed on the same story for over 3000
years. If you think about Hollywood, all they’re doing is constantly telling stories and
they’re making billions from it.

Stories entertain us, they generate rapport in us with the person telling the story. They
generate vision, and they bypass our logical defenses.

Have you ever sat in a movie theatre and watched a scary movie? Even though we
logically know it’s just a movie and we aren’t in real danger, a part of our brain doesn’t
know that.

Hence the reason our pulse starts pounding and our palms get sweaty.

What happens when we watch a good movie, listen to a great speaker, or read a well
written story?

We become the character. It’s not rocky beating the big bad Russian, that’s us. We put
ourselves in the shoes of the underdog and we see ourselves becoming successful.

That’s what makes those movies so compelling.

In sales, stories are important because you can tell a horror story, make no claims
whatsoever, and sell more products than others who only focus on features and
benefits.

In fact, as a copywriter I’m always looking for a horror story to tell or. The next best story
is a good rags to riches story, an underdog story, or all of the above.

Why? Because as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, I know that will lead to sales.

If you want to learn about selling, Joseph Campbell wrote a book called the Hero with
1000 Faces. Campbell actually analyzed thousands of stories over his life and he found
common storylines across every culture. From the Bible, to the Bhagavad Gita, all the
way to Star Wars and the Matrix.

I’ll give you the basics of a good hero's journey. (I learned this from Michael Hauge’s
new book “Storytelling Made Easy”)

1. You introduce the hero and the background of the story. The hero typically wants
something. Sometimes they are in danger, sometimes they’re just bored and they
want an adventure.

2. Usually some event happens which creates a crisis for the hero. This starts them
on their journey. It could be that their home is in foreclosure, they can’t find a job,
or they decide “enough is enough” and they start seeking something more for
 their life.

3. The crisis causes the hero to go in pursuit of a goal. Hauge says they usually
take 2 actions in pursuit of the goal. At this stage, a mentor or a guide appears to
show the hero the way. In Star Wars, the guide was Yoda showing Luke how to
use the Force. In the matrix, the guide was Morpheus.

4. Along the path laid out by the guide, there’s always conflicts and obstacles.
These create tension in the story. Tension creates emotion and it holds our
attention. These conflicts can be external or internal. The hero could be doubting
if they will succeed, they could get rejected by their prospects, they could be
skeptical of a new selling technique. It’s super important to include lots of
obstacles, pitfalls, problems and roadblocks in your story. You want your
audience to be rooting for the hero. More importantly, you want them to wonder
“what will happen next?” That’s going to keep them glued to the story. If you
make the story too linear and predictable, you’ll lose their attention.

5. Now we get to the climax of the story. Frodo’s at Mount Doom about to throw the
one ring into the lava. It’s round 12 and Rocky is barely hanging on fighting
Apollo Creed. Neo is fighting Agent Smith in the battle for all mankind. It’s the
moment of greatest tension and emotion in the story. Where the conflicts were
minor, the climax is life or death.

6. Michael calls the last step the Aftermath. This is the life after everything. The
transformation of your hero. If you’re selling something, the aftermath and the
“happily ever ever” should be the state your prospect wants to feel.

Stories help your prospect emotionally experience what it’s like solving their problems.
That’s what makes them so effective for selling. If you stick to the same 6 “beats” as
Michael calls them I just listed, your stories will stick.

Most people tell stories that are 90% set up and crisis, with a little pursuit. They almost
always skip the conflict, climax and aftermath. If you skip these parts, your stories will
lack all the emotional “umph” that makes them effective.

I highly recommend you make it a habit of studying great stories, learning from masters
like Michael Hauge, and practice telling your own. Even if you’re just telling them in front
of a mirror or on your personal Facebook page.

I constantly study great communicators, great storytellers, great persuaders, and great
speakers. In sales, you really don’t have a lot of control over your prospect. They will
buy when they want to buy, not when you want to sell.
What can you control? Your ability to tell a good story. How persuasive your
presentations are. How well you connect with your prospect and uncover their true
motivation.

And the next technique is one of the most important elements of sales in your control.

Technique Number 4: Relentless Follow Up

One of my favorite sales books is The Ultimate Selling Machine by Chet Holmes. He’s
all about “relentless pigheaded discipline and determination”.

Persistent follow up is the rule to success, not the exception.

Lots of people want to know the secret to this whole “internet marketing thing”.
I could have condensed success in sales and marketing, really this entire book, into two
sentences...

Find out what people want and give it to them. Then relentlessly follow up with them
until they buy.

Every successful person I know in sales is a master at following up. These days I prefer
to do my follow up automatically with daily “infotainment style” emails loaded into an
autoresponder, but there’s nothing like jumping on the phone with your prospects.

Relentless follow up is what got me my first freelance copywriting client, what’s allowed
me to reach out to 9 figure marketers and influencers, and what separates me from
“lesser mortals”.

The best part is persistence is one trait anyone can have.

Like most sales principles, it’s certainly not “new and hot” or “sexy” advice, but it’s really
where you’ll make most of your money.

In sales, we like to refer to the “buying temperature”. You have cold, warm and hot
prospects.

At any point, only 3% of the market is “hot”, meaning they’re actively looking for a
solution to their problem with their wallets out. If you put out a lead generation ad, keep
it in mind, you won’t be able to close everyone right away.

The big money comes from following up with the rest of your cold and warm leads until
they’re hot. There was a study done showing people who respond to ads almost always
buy... within 18 months.

That means if you’re only focusing on the hottest leads, you’ll let a lot of money slip
through your fingers.
You don’t have to follow up everyday like me, I have my own reasons for doing that.
If you do it wrong, as most people do, you’ll lose a lot of sales.

Look, I don’t know what you’re selling, but here’s a general rule: follow up at least once
a month. Preferably at least weekly. You can do it via a print newsletter, a phone call,
dropping by in person, sending postcards, daily emails like me, or carrier pigeons.

...It doesn’t matter. The important thing is making sure you do it.

Technique Number 5: Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Greatest Copywriter

Gary Bencivenga is objectively regarded as the greatest living copywriter. His sales
letters have brought in billions of dollars for his client's over his long career.

He spent his professional life writing for the most competitive industries in the world,
finance and health newsletters and books. These fields attract the best of the best, and
Gary never lost to another copywriter for book sales.

To give you an idea of the stakes at hand, one package he created went on to be
mailed 100 million times. That earned him a cool 5 million smackers.

Copywriters are no different than salesmen, they just use the written word at mass
scales instead of one on one.

Gary had an amazing secret for beating his tough competitors time and time
again.

What was the secret?

Simple.
He made his sales pitches valuable in and of themselves. One strategy was making his
sales letters look like valuable books, another was giving unique and valuable
information in the sales letters themselves.

Here’s an example of a sales letter I wrote after learning this simple secret.
www.BenByrneMedia.com/internet-millionaire-secrets

People who’ve read this letter told me they felt inspired by it. They learned valuable
information about advertising and making money, and they also felt compelled to take
my offer at the end.

That’s the exact response you’re looking for from your pitch.
Here’s another one I wrote for freelance copywriters or people interested in learning
about freelance copywriting.

www.BenByrneMedia.com/freelance-copywriting-templates

Same deal. Valuable information in here for anyone interested in freelance copywriting.

Here’s the interesting part.

Gary had identified 5 objections that occur in every sale.

1. No Time
2. No Interest
3. No Difference
4. No Belief
5. No Decision

Making the sales pitches valuable effectively solved the first objection of not having any
time.

Half the battle in copywriting and sales in general is getting attention, so this part is
critical.

The next objection of having no interest is met by identifying your prospects “bleeding
neck”, or an urgent problem that they need to have solved.

Remember, if you’re in the other person’s world, talking about her wants, desires,
problems and pains, you never need to worry about not being interesting to them.

Moving on, the third objection to every sale is no difference. Your prospect has no
reason to buy from you if they don’t perceive any difference between your solution and
your competitors.

A great copywriter named Eugene Schwartz wrote a book called “Breakthrough

Advertising”.

In that book, Schwartz coined the term “unique mechanism”.

What is a unique mechanism?

It’s what makes your product or service different. It’s a new or better way of delivering a
result, built into your product or service itself.

For instance, if everyone is selling diet pills, your unique mechanism could be the
special patented formula for your diet pill. Something you can prove delivers faster or
better results than everyone else.
Most importantly, your unique mechanism is something no other competitor can offer.

It’s very important you don’t make the mistake most other advertisers and salespeople
make.

The reason why we hate commercials and getting pitched is simply because most
people focus on their solution instead of our problems first.
I mentioned this earlier but it’s important to drive this point home.

A sales formula I learned working door to door is “problem, agitation, solution” (PAS).
This formula works like a charm, provided you don’t get it backwards and start with your
solution.

For a visual, think of PAS like stabbing someone with a knife, twisting it, and then
offering them a band-aid. You might consider it to be manipulative, but it’s really the
best way to grab their attention and cause them to take action.

Remember, nobody wins if no sale is made.

The next objection is no belief.

Gary’s entire success in selling was because he focused exclusively on providing

overwhelming proof rather than hype and excessive claims.

You need to constantly run your own pitches or sales letters through two filters.

The first is “So what”, the second is “Bullsh*t”. If you put yourself in the prospects shoes
while you do your pitch and find yourself saying “so what” or calling BS more than once
or twice, you’ll lose their interest and the sale.

There are all kinds of proof elements you can use. Testimonials, case studies, statistics,
credible sources, stories, expert opinions, and so on.

The most powerful in Gary’s expert opinion is dramatic demonstration.

Before Otis elevators were made, elevator cables had a reputation for snapping and
crashing with their riders plummeting to their death.

There were hardly any buildings over 3 stories high at that time. Until Otis showed up.

Did Otis simply run an ad telling people how their elevators were safe? No way!

They proved it.

Otis set up an elevator in front of a live crowd. A man took an axe to the cable and it
snapped. The brakes immediately locked the elevator car from falling and the rest is
history.

If your prospect can see for herself what you’re saying is true, that’s all she’ll need to
persuade herself in most cases.

Finally, to get over the objection of no decision, you need to make an irresistible offer.
Something that makes it easy for the prospect to say yes.

The legendary marketer Jay Abraham coined the term “Risk Reversal”. Think money
back guarantee. It’s a great way to knock people off the fence.
You can also use deadlines, limited supply, the use of bonuses for deciding now,
value stacking, or a few other methods I cover more extensively in my copywriting
course.

The second last technique I’ll mention in this book is unlike any you’ve heard before.

Technique Number 6: Getting “Physical Opt-In”

See, one of the oldest direct marketing strategies is giving people freebies in exchange
for their contact info.

They’re raising their hands to signal their interested as prospects in exchange for
valuable information (engaging the “law of reciprocity”). Plus, you get to relentlessly
follow up with them until they become buyers.

A mistake most rookie marketing consultants, agency owners, freelancers, and service
providers is giving away their time without getting “physical” opt in.

What is physical opt in? It’s a method of qualification.

While most of said professionals will meet their prospects for free, give audits for free,
give consulting sessions for free, and go to their prospects offices to meet - I suggest
you do the opposite.

You charge between $200-$500 depending on your business to meet with prospective
client's. Naturally when they object, you say “Okay, I’ll waive the fee, provided you meet
me at a venue of my choosing”.

When they agree, they will be much more committed to meeting you and they will
typically be a better client in the long term.
You don’t have to use this technique, but I’ve found it to be very effective in getting
better quality clients and not wasting my time traveling.
An important caveat is the goal isn’t to sell the initial meeting, it’s to further qualify your
prospects. It’s entirely about how you position yourself.

Technique Number 7: How to Write Easy Ad Copy Using an Objection Handling

Formula

If you’ve ever felt frustrated and at a total loss for writing Facebook ad copy, this section
will help.

I used to hit writer's block too. I remember staring at my computer not knowing what to
write, and it totally sucked. My old process for writing ads was to pace around for 2
hours, stare at the screen for an hour, then spend two hours writing, and 3 hours
erasing what I wrote.

Just to start all over again.

That was until I found out what is probably the most brain dead simple method for
writing compelling ads. It doesn’t require you to be a professional ad writer at all. In fact,
you don’t need to know anything about copywriting.

The technique comes in 3 parts and I’ve just used it for this section. Just about every
salesperson learned this objection handling technique on their first day.
Go back and try to spot it…I’ll wait.
….
…
..
.
Have you figured it out yet?

It’s feel, felt, found!

The funny thing is I’ve found this formula actually works better for writing ads then it
does for handling objections!

Let’s quickly dissect the three sections.

1. FEEL: You want to briefly acknowledge a problem they’re facing and how that
problem makes them feel.
2. FELT: You want to explain how you felt the same frustrations with that problem.
How you used to struggle with it too. This is a little story section. Again, it’s
important to keep it brief on Facebook.
3. FOUND: That was until you found your solution. If they want to see what it is, all
they need to do next is click the link below.

Easy, right?
That’s all there is to it!

Bonus Technique #8: The Power of Silence.

Great salesmen and saleswomen are not like the ones you see on TV. They’re not
speaking a mile a minute and coming up with the answers to every objection until you
ultimately buy.

They use silence in their favor. Especially over the phone.

When you’re in a sales call and you ask a question like “What is your monthly
revenue?”, it’s vital you shut up. Do not make the all too common mistake of continuing
talking until they give you a good answer.

Give yourself time to think when you’re in a sales call. Silence is very powerful.

There are two more ways silence can amplify your selling ability.

First, when you’re talking to a prospect, it’s very important you hold back any
judgement.
If they tell you their sales have been slow this month, don’t respond back like, “Oh that
really sucks.” If they tell you they have been buying from your competitor, don’t judge
them in any way.

Second, when they start answering questions that are particularly painful, they’re going
to be causing themselves emotional pain.

Again, if you’re speaking to a struggling business owner and they tell you sales are
slow, just respond, I see.

If you have a solution which can help them solve their problem, it’s a HUGE mistake to
immediately tell them how your service can help them get more customers and
everything will be awesome.

Why?

You just solved their pain. You must learn to let them feel their pain or you’ll lose more
sales than need be.

Repeat after me…The only relief you want your prospect to feel is when they hand over
their credit card or sign your contract.

You’re doing neither you nor them any good if you solve their pain before they buy.
How to Make Price Irrelevant

All too often, sales have been lost because of price.

Price is a mysterious force to many people. To some, it’s an impenetrable barrier.

To others, it’s a non-issue.

Here’s something I find endlessly interesting.

Humans really have no way of establishing the value of anything…by itself.

Price and money are both abstract concept in our minds.

To see evidence of this, take a look around your local supermarket.

Let’s take bottles of water. Why do some sell for under $1 while others sell for $5?
Both are selling the same product, water. Right?

They both hydrate you if you’re thirsty, what’s the difference?

If you ask my Dad, he’ll tell you he can taste the difference between different bottles of
water. I can’t. They all taste the same to me.
Some have more minerals, some have added vitamins, some are glacier fed, some are
from icebergs.

At the end of the day, the only difference is the packaging and the story about the
water.

Price isn’t set in stone, it’s elastic. Even commodities can be differentiated.

Typically, if your prospect is saying your price is too much, it’s for two reasons.

The first is they simply haven’t been sold of all the benefits yet of this product over
competing options, or the problem isn’t severe enough for them to fork over what you’re
asking.

The second reason is you haven’t given them anything to compare the price to.

Psychologists call this anchoring. Similarly, one of my marketing and sales hero's, Dan
Kennedy, says you should always be comparing apples to oranges.

That means if you’re selling one sales book, you don’t compare it to other sales books.

You compare it to the length of time it would take to learn all the knowledge in the book
on your own. You compare it to how many more sales they will make after reading it
and what that will mean for their income. You compare it to the high-priced seminar
where you teach this information.
If you’re selling websites, you compare it to the cost of hiring a marketing agency to
create one for you. You compare it to the time spent learning design, copy, coding, and
the technical headaches involved.

My rule is to be selling something worth 10 times more than your asking price.

Another way to deal with price objections is called “Chunking.”

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say you’re selling a fitness coaching package for $8000.

What you can do is say sure $8000 is a lot, but imagine 12 months from now when you
have the rock-solid body you want. You’ll have more attention from the opposite sex,
more energy, more self confidence, and you’ll live longer, be more resistant to injury
and disease, plus you will be happier overall.

By the way, $8000 is only $666 per month. That’s $22.20 per day.
Here’s what you can buy for $22.20 a day, you can buy <whacky gizmo>.
(You google “What can I buy for <insert price> and come up with something ridiculous.)

Would you rather have amazing self confidence or that random gizmo?
Would you rather be attractive to the opposite sex or have the $22.20?
Would you rather live longer and healthier, or have the $22.20 to buy a 12 pack of beer?

See how it works?

How to Sell a Commodity for More Than Everyone Else.

If you’re selling a single product, there’s an easy way to separate yourself from your
competitors. This works for commodity products too.

I learned this from Russell Brunson - you want to sell an “offer”, not just a product.

What’s the difference?

Let’s say you’re selling a car.

What could you do to make just the car more attractive? What could you do to add
value to a car? Well you could throw in 3 years of car washes, a set of winter tires, 4
free oil changes, a 5-year warranty, and an all-inclusive trip for two to Jamaica.

If your competitor is selling the exact same car for $50,000, you could sell that offer for
$65,000. The cost of the extras might be 5-7,000 but you’re still making $8000 more.
What other kinds of offers could we make?

How about a set of golf clubs?

I’m no golf expert, but I imagine if you took a set of $400 golf clubs and you included a
few training videos from golfing experts, an in-person training session from a local pro, a
few hard to find books to help improve your golf swing, and a couple free rounds of golf
at the local course, you could sell that for $1500-3000.

What are the extra hard costs for that offer? Maybe 200-400?
Not sure about you, but I’d say it’s worth the effort.

How about mouse traps?

Let’s say a mousetrap costs $2.50. What would make a good offer for mouse traps?
How about we throw in a free checklist on the 7 ways mice get into your home and how
to prevent them, a list of common household pests and unorthodox ways to get rid of
them, an extra mousetrap plus some irresistible mouse bait.

You could package that and sell it for $20.00 quite easily to people with mice problems.

One common theme with selling commodity products is including information.

Brainstorm how you can improve your prospects life around the problem your product or
service solves, bundle that up into a package and include it with your product.

Use that same information in your ads as lead generation tools. By giving away specific
info related to their problem, the only people who will take it are those who would be
good candidates for your solution.

That’s how you sell a commodity for more than anyone else.

My goal with this section was to prove to you if price is a common objection you’re
getting, you just need to get more creative.

Here’s one last helpful technique.

The Straight Face Method for Getting Paid WAY More.

This is a technique I also learned from Dan Kennedy. For context, Dan gets paid
$18,800 a day for consulting. He often has projects going into the million-dollar range.

But for a long time, he was poor.

How did he make the jump from underpaid consultant who had to choose between rent
or gas money, to sipping Champagne and eating caviar off a silver platter?
One thing that really helped is what Dan calls, “The Straight Face Method”.

This is how it works.

When your prospect asks you how much your services are, you tell them with
downward vocal tonality and a straight face the absurd (to you) rate. It’s all about being
confident in the value you offer, not tricking the client.

And it’s simple yet effective. It worked for me for my first freelance copywriting client.
At that time, I had no experience besides what I learned from reading, listening to
podcasts, and watching Youtube videos.

I wrote a sales letter to get a job for a local marketing company. I sent it to them via
UPS and they called me a week later to come in.
They didn’t hire me for the job I wanted, but they wanted me to write their sales letters,
which they outsourced.

They asked me, “What’s your rate?”

Fortunately, I was aware of the straight face method. I picked a number which was
unbelievably high to me at the time, $2000. I clenched my butt cheeks, and said it with a
straight face.

They instantly accepted. (Thinking back, that’s a sure sign I didn’t ask for enough).

Lessons learned.

Let’s move on.

How to Create a Never-Ending Lead Generation System.

Like most other introverted salespeople, I started learning about social media marketing
and copywriting because I hated rejection and I sucked at talking to people.

It would be a huge disservice to you if I didn’t disclose my system for selling using social
media marketing and internet marketing.

This completely took away the need for cold calling or knocking on doors uninvited and
made my life 10,000 times easier and less stressful.

You hear about sales funnels all the time on the internet.

Heck, even when I was working door to door, we used a version of a sales funnel.

For example, for every 60 doors we knocked on, we could aim for 30 decision makers,
15 presentations, and 3 closes.
Well you can basically take that exact idea and translate it to the internet.

You see, I’ve developed systems to harness social media, advertising, blogs, and email
marketing to make sales. It works for me, it works for my client's, and it will work for you
too if you apply it.

The best part is, once you have this system in place and fine tuned, you won’t have to
spend a fortune on advertising.
Think of it like a vending machine where you put in a few dollars, and out pops a lead
(and eventually a customer!).

You might already know some of this but it’ll be a good refresher. Plus this section will
really make it crystal clear how a internet sales funnel works.

Check it.

What is a website?
It’s basically a series of pages connected to each other. Really that’s the entire internet,
but let’s not get off track.

Your goal with an internet funnel is to get people from social media, to your website, to
your email list, to your sales page, to your checkout or order page, to buying. (and
buying again and again).

Instead of knocking on 60 doors, I put an ad in front of my target market either on social

media, Google, Youtube, or any other number of places attracting the attention of my
ideal customers.

Instead of talking to 30 decision makers, a smaller percentage of my target market

exchanges their contact info and becomes a lead.

Instead of 15 presentations, a smaller percentage of my leads will go to my sales page

and either read my sales letter or watch my video sales letter.

Finally, a small percentage of those people will buy my products.

How this works mechanically is first you get traffic, then opt-in’s, then engagement with
your emails meaning opens and clicks, and then sales.

That means from an ad… they go to page 1. The opt in page.

Then to page 2, your sales page.
Then page 3, your order or application page.
Then page 4, your download page. (this can be tweaked depending on what you’re
selling).

You can set up retargeting ads and emails based on which pages they see, which I
cover more in my free content marketing guide.

Check out the guide here after you read this book

www.benbyrnemedia.com/content-marketing-guide

Sounds easy, right? Not so fast...

When I was a kid, we went outside, climbed trees, and lit stuff on fire. Kids these days
play on their iPads and Xboxes all day. What does that mean for you?

The more people spend time on the internet, the noisier it gets. More attention attracts
more advertisers. The more people see advertising, the more immune to it they get.

That’s called ad blindness.

In general, if your ad or message looks just like every other ad, you won’t get the most
important thing in sales. Attention.

To get attention, you gotta have a good message. It must be put in front of the right
people. You also need to use the right media. Dan Kennedy calls this the market-media-
message match.

For example: If you’re trying to reach 65-year-old conservative males, don’t advertise on
Snapchat.
In most cases, you can find a humongous list of your very best, high paying prospects
on Facebook. You can target your exact ideal customer and put a message right in front
of the people who Facebook deems most likely to buy.

I have an entire course on writing the messages that get people to buy from you, but if
you follow the basics I outlined from Gary Bencivenga, you’ll be way farther ahead than
most copywriters.

So back to the funnel.

Once you get your messaging right, you put it in front of the right people, where do you
take them?

First, I’ll explain how internet sales funnels used to work.

A while ago, all you had to do was send ads to people driving them to a “squeeze page”
where they gave their email in exchange for an e-book, checklist, or a free report.
(AKA a lead magnet).
From there, marketers would follow up with email, sending them to a long form sales
page to buy their products.

A few notes on the “old way”.

Email marketing is still the most effective medium for driving sales, despite all the fuss
about social media. Why?

It’s more personal, if you do it right, people actually look forward to your emails, and
people have been conditioned to buy from emails in general.

If you forget your password to your savings account, does your bank send it to you in a
Facebook message?

No, they send it by email.

Email marketing is so important, I’m going to devote an entire section just to writing
emails which lead to sales. This happens to be one of my main superpowers.

The main sources of internet traffic are still Facebook ads and Google Adwords. Over
the years however, they cracked down on direct response advertisers hard.

You can still drive traffic to opt in pages, however if you want to convert the highest
number of prospects to leads, there’s another way.

The “Ungated Content” Strategy.

One strategy to get higher returns on your ad dollars is to send people to read blogs or
watch videos without forcing them to give you their email. This is known as “ungated”
content.
The goal of this strategy is to pre-sell people on your product, and deliver goodwill to
your marketplace in the form of helpful content.

Pre-sell content should do two jobs.

The first is educating prospects about a topic they’re interested in related to your
product, and the second is raising their awareness of a problem and linking the solution
to your product.

You also want to “bait the hook” with your content. By this I mean give away 90% of the
content for free, but leave out the 10% that will make them buy.

In general, the more you teach, the less sales you make. Baiting the hook is how you
can teach and still make sales.
The key is giving away what they need to do, while being vague about how they do it.

Another strategy is being very specific on their problem, while being vague about your
solution.

For example, let’s say you’re selling a product about fasting.

You could say something like this.

Did you know there are only two scientifically proven ways to naturally increase your
lifespan?

They are eating 20% less and fasting regularly.

It’s true. There have been multiple studies proving this fact. The trick however, is
knowing how often to fast, what foods you should never eat before fasting, what foods
are okay to eat, and so on.

To learn everything you need to know, all you need to do is buy my $47 course, “How to
Naturally Live Longer by following the 3 tier Fasting Method.”

That’s how you bait the hook.

Marketers have another term for pre-sell content. Advertorials.

The key is to have numerous calls to action throughout the pre-sell page to become a
lead.
If prospects just leave the page without becoming a lead, you can retarget them with
Facebook and Google retargeting ads by placing a tiny piece of code on your website.

(You can learn all this stuff in further detail with my free content marketing guide on my
blog.
Here’s the link again>>www.benbyrnemedia.com/content-marketing-guide)

From the pre-sell page, the next page is the opt in page. Just like the squeeze page,
they give you their email and sometimes more contact info in exchange for valuable
info. It could also be a webinar, a quote, a PDF, a video, or any other number of things.

Again, times have changed in terms of what people will exchange their emails for.
For a long time, e-books were great. Now you can hardly expect anyone to read through
an e-book completely.

This is a BIG problem if you’re hoping to educate these people with the lead magnet
and sell them on higher priced products.
As of 2017, the best lead magnets are quizzes, 1-page actionable PDFs, or templates.
(Quizzes are especially good if they disqualify people, for an example check out Perry
Marshalls tool www.isFBforMe.com). Another example is www.profitactivatorscorecard.

I have no affiliation with either link.

The worst lead magnet in almost every case is simply asking people to sign up for your
newsletter.

For lead magnets, you want to give people solid, actionable, specific pieces of
information. They should be easy to consume and naturally lead into what you’re
selling.

For example, if you’re selling basketball training, you could give away a short training
video.
If you’re selling a marketing service like SEO, a quiz like Perry Marshall’s would work
good to disqualify people who aren’t a good fit for your service.

A good rule of thumb is, if your prospect can get an immediate result or a little win from
downloading your lead magnet, that’s perfect. You want to give them confidence before
ever asking for money.

Next, in most businesses, when someone downloads your lead magnet, the next page
(the thank you page) is a perfect chance to offer them a low dollar product or service.

Digital Marketer coined this a “tripwire”. I’m not a huge fan of that term, but it’s what
most people recognize and use.

If a dentist has a free teeth cleaning for their lead magnet, a “tripwire” could be a $47
teeth whitening service.
Sometimes these are called “OTO’s” or one time offers.

For example, if you usually charge $99 for your product, you could offer it for 50% off
this one time. That price goes away forever if they leave the page.

Now you have a lead and possibly even an initial sale from your OTO or tripwire.

Moving forward, you need to relentlessly follow up with emails and retargeting ads until
people go to your sales page and buy.

While long form sales letters still work, video sales letters (VSL) or a mix of video and
long form sales letters also work great.

If writing a sales letter sounds daunting to you, here’s one of the easiest ways to do it.
I learned this from Gary Halbert, one of the all time best copywriters. Simply record your
sales pitches for an entire day.

Next, take your recordings, transcribe them, and arrange the pitch in logical order.

You can also just record yourself pitching a friend while pretending they’re your
prospect, or the wall if you don’t have friends.

Again, think about the 5 objections I spoke about in the section about Gary Bencivenga
while writing your letter or the script for your VSL.

From there, you can have up-sell, down-sell, or cross sell pages which function a lot like
the OTO’s.

The cool part about sales funnels is that it’s pretty easy to see where you need to
improve.
If you’re getting people into the top of the funnel (your pre-sell pages), who are reading
the content but not clicking over to your opt in page, you probably need to improve your
pre-sell content.

If you have people clicking through to your opt in page but not becoming a lead, you
have to improve the copy on that page. (Or you’re targeting the wrong people). Or the
offer itself.

If people aren’t even clicking through your ad, this could be the message of your ad or
who you’re putting it in front of.

This process goes on and on until it becomes a smooth-running machine.

The key is, you gotta get started and commit to doing this.

Side note, most people will tell you to test little things like the color of your call to action
button. As Ben Settle says, you need to test screams, not whispers.

Test the price, test the offer, test the headline. Test a long form sales page versus a
video sales letter. Test a webinar versus a video sales letter. Test daily emails versus
weekly.

The winning mindset for internet marketing.

When you write and launch ads, you must accept the fact you will fail at first. It’s
guaranteed you will “lose money”, no matter how much learning you do.

The key is looking at spending money on ads the right way.

You’re spending money to acquire data on what works and what doesn’t work. It’s
impossible to waste money on advertising.
In fact, you should be shoveling as much money into your advertising platform of
choice because you’ll get that data that much faster.

Success with internet marketing, just like success in any other type of sales has a lot
more to do with your mindset than your skillset.

“Cracking the code” of turning cold traffic into buyers with advertising is the best skill
you can acquire, so it’s worth it to learn.

Email Wizardry

If you listen to most of the social media “Flakepreneurs”, they’ll tell you that “email is
dead”.

The data tells a different story. For example, a study by McKinsey & Co found that email
brought in 40 times more sales than Twitter and Facebook...combined!

Personally, I’ve never made a sale from social media. But I’ve made a ton from email.

Most people are not on Facebook to buy. They’re there to waste time.

Facebook is also full of distractions, where your email is not. (once they click it).

The thing is, there are all kinds of ways to screw up emails. Truly more than I can list
here, but the following are a few of the main pitfalls.

1) Your email service provider (ESP) isn’t delivering the emails.

This happens more than you think. Some better ESPs for deliverability are Aweber and
ConvertKit. I use ActiveCampaign for its user friendliness. They seem to deliver emails
most of the time.

2) Infrequent emails.

Most email marketers treat their emails like late night bootycalls. They only talk to
them when they have something to sell.

Dean Jackson is a legendary marketer and co-host of the I Love Marketing podcast. He
was asked, “how often should you email your list?”

His response?

“Only on the days you want to make money.”

For some reason, people insist on only emailing once a month, or even once a week
and wonder why they get lots of unsubscribes and no sales.

If you mail daily, the opposite happens. People remember who you are and start to look
forward to hearing from you. (if you write them the right way.)

Here’s by far the biggest mistake made in email

Either sending only sales emails or content emails.

Look in your inbox right now and you’ll probably see a bunch of subject lines from some
brands you don’t care about saying…
“50% off until midnight!”
“3 Days left until this sale ends!”
“Buy my sh*t!”

If you’re a Gmail user, take a peek inside your promotions tab and you’ll see page after
page of this trash.

On the other hand, you’ll have people who NEVER sell in their emails. See, there was a
marketer who taught people to send “valuable emails” to your list so you don’t burn
them out, only selling in every 3rd or 5th email.

Like the “soap opera sequence”. This is basically telling your story over 5-7 days with
cliff hangers sprinkled throughout. Only selling on the last day.

It makes sense why this is better, right?

People will love your emails, you’ll have great open rates and your prospects will read
them all. The problem is you won’t sell anything and when you DO ask for money,
people will call you a greedy a-hole for trying to get money from them.

Also, there’s a good chance they’ll miss the email where you’re finally selling something.
People do NOT have time to wait for you to get to the point. As Gary Halbert would say,
Just Sell the Damn Thing!”.

So, what should your emails do instead?

The answer comes in the form of a happy medium known as infotainment. In fact, this
is how I write all my Facebook posts, my emails, my blogs, even this book to a certain
extent.
The key is being able to tell stories, make rants, be entertaining and educating at the
same time…Then transitioning to making a relative offer to your list.

Most people “swipe” emails because they’re either too lazy to write their own, or they
can’t think for themselves. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter.
If you write infotainment style emails, they’ll love reading your emails. They’ll stick out
like a fart in an elevator.

One of my mottos for writing emails is “values not value.”

Rather than give away the whole farm with valuable content, I tell people about my
values in the form of stories, “slices of life”, anecdotes, controversial “rant style” emails,
and a few other ways. These help my subscribers connect with me and they also help
me sell stuff.

Two of my favorite ways to write emails are to either sell against a common enemy, or
write a day in your prospects diary.

The best way to see this in action is to get on my list if you’re not already there.

www.benbyrnemedia.com/freebies

In general, you want to be opinionated in your emails. (Assuming you share the same
opinions with your target market).

Really, it’s all about polarity. You want to push away people who aren’t a good fit for you
with your message by making them cold, or make the people who love hearing from you
“hot” for you. The last thing you want is having people feel “lukewarm” towards you.

I learned this style of writing from Ben Settle, a great email marketer.

He says your emails should be like “talk radio”. Everyday you show up, give them a
smidgeon of value and a lot of entertainment, give them a link to buy, and repeat that
over and over.

Think of your emails as the one thing people look forward to reading everyday. The one
thing that gets their pulse pounding, that makes them spit out their coffee and roar with
laughter, or the one thing that gets them thinking and inspired.

Of course, you can take this style of writing emails and apply it to making daily videos,
blogs, social media posts, podcasts, anything.

If you’re gathering emails, you shouldn’t be worried sending people too many emails if
you’re doing it this style. If anything, they should consider it to be a privilege for them to
be on your email list.

As long as you make it clear when they sign up for your list they know they’ll be
receiving daily email tips and promotions, you’ll actually get less spam complaints.
By the way, the key to getting strong open rates, click through rates, and sales is
understanding the most powerful and compelling truth of human nature…

Curiosity.

The late great Gary Halbert wrote an ad that continued to pull orders for years all based
on one tiny point about “legal cocaine.” People who read that ad HAD to know what it
was (hey, it was the 80’s, man).

In general, the most powerful combination is including curiosity with a big benefit.

(note I didn’t say a big benefit with curiosity. By far, curiosity is more important)

One last suggestion for your emails

Dean Jackson from the I Love Marketing podcast has a cool concept I shamelessly
swiped called the “Super Signature”.

I suggest you do NOT teach in your emails or give out anything that’s in your product if
you’re selling digital products.

However, If you insist on doing pure content emails, the super signature is what you
need to add to the bottom of every email.

What you want to do is write something like “Whenever you’re ready, here’s a few ways
I can help you <get whatever result is related to what you’re selling>.

For instance, Dean Jackson has an option to be a guest on his podcast, to join his email
marketing program, to join his real estate program, and so on.

I have a bunch of options on my emails too for all my courses, even though I make
every email sell ONE thing.

Moving on,

The Billion Dollar Habit

I want to take a brief intermission to share a concept which will make you a lot more
money in your selling and advertising.

I’m willing to bet you’ve heard it before. That doesn’t matter if you don’t do it.

What is it? The idea of making your best better through testing and optimizing.

The worst thing you can do is blindly assume the way you’ve been selling is the most
effective way to do it.
There are countless examples of ads that multiplied their selling power just by changing
a headline.

Likewise, changing your opening paragraph can make a 300% difference in how many
sales you close.

Changing your subject line can mean the difference between 1 in 100 people
responding to you and 25 out of 100.

I call it the billion-dollar habit because there was one guy who literally parlayed $100
into over a billion through consistent and methodical testing.

A prime example is in books.

Tim Ferriss wrote the best-selling book the 4 Hour Work Week.

I heard him say in an interview how the original title for his book was “How to Sell Drugs
for Fun and Profit.”

If he would of went with his first title, I wouldn’t be talking about him right now.

Instead, he tested over 50 different titles using Google Adwords.

Sure, it might have cost him a few thousand dollars, but his return on investment was
astronomical.

I used a few Facebook groups to test over 50 different subtitles for this book.

It didn’t cost me anything but my time. Plus, the subtitle I ended up with was much
better than the first one I picked.

Case in point.

E. Julius Haldeman was a direct response marketer from the 1920’s who built a
publishing empire worth well over 100 million dollars.

Not many people know about E.J.H, but he wrote a book aptly titled “The First 100
Million.”

His business was built on what he called “Little Blue Books.”

They all looked the exact same. Each one was either 64 pages or 128 and they could fit
in your pocket. The only difference was their title.
He would advertise the little blue books by taking out an ad in the newspaper and listing
a couple hundred titles for 5 cents each. People had to pick 20 books and send in 1$ to
get them.

Haldeman discovered an amazing secret. By simply changing the title of a book and
nothing else, he could radically increase sales.

For example, “Gautiers Fleece of Gold” was selling around 6000 copies.

The title was changed to “The Quest for Blond Mistress.”

(It turned out the Public was and still is mostly interested in sex.)

Remember, exact same book, exact same content. The ONLY difference was the title.

The new version sold around 50,000 copies.

By the way, Tim Ferriss tested “The 2 Hour Work Week” and people found it to be too
unbelievable. Yes, I’m literally shaking my head in disbelief as I write this.

To sum up, if you have a winning sales presentation, the first thing you want to test is
your headlines, opening introductions, or the first 10 seconds of your call.

Next, test your offer. Many times, you can put the right message in front of the right
market but if it’s not the right offer, they won’t buy.

This is something I go in depth in my copywriting course.

Moving on.

Extending the Lifespan of your Content Through Super Syndication

One way to extend the lifespan of every piece of content you make is to use “Super
Syndication” across various social media channels.

You can take a Facebook post and put it on your blog, send it to your email list, write it
on Linkedin, and post it in a few Facebook groups. You can turn that post into a short
Youtube video. You can turn it into a podcast. You can take bite sized pieces and tweet
it, post it on Instagram, Pinterest, you name it.

(A little caveat: I like to put my best content out on my email to give people a better
reason to stay subscribed.)

This can be a lot of work, but if you consistently do it every day for a few months, you’ll
build a large following. Especially if you amplify this cycle with paid ads.
Doing this will help you build your reputation faster as an expert. Client's will hear about
you and start seeking you out.

Reputation is the name of the game. See, there are three aspects to your professional
reputation.

Let me ask you…

Which is more Valuable? Expertise, Skills, or Expert Status?

If you’re not getting as many client's as you’d like right now, it’s probably because you’re
lacking in one of these areas. Hear me out.

Your expertise is how much you know about your subject.

Your skills are how good you are at your subject.
Your expert status is how much other people know you’re an expert at your subject.

Ideally, all three should be high. In reality, that’s rarely the case.

Expertise is the easiest to gain. You can watch a few YouTube videos, read a few
books, and call yourself an expert. To be fair, most people read zero books, compared
to them you really are an expert.

Skills take time to learn and master. You can speed the process up with help from a
mentor. One who actively gives you feedback, combined with hours of implementation
everyday.

However, there are all kinds of skilled experts who are still broke because they lack…

Expert Status.

If you go on CNN tonight and talk about your area of expertise, you just confirmed your
expert status with millions. You could be the least qualified person to talk about it, but by
merely appearing in the media, your expert status is there for everyone to see.

Dr. Phil is a prime example. Look up his history to find out for yourself. (After you read
this book!)

Writing and publishing a physical book used to have this same effect. To some extent, it
still does.

Your expert status, what people know about you before they do business with you, can
make you more money than your skills and expertise.

For example, there are photographers who charge $500 for a photoshoot.
Another photographer can charge $10,000 using the exact same equipment, with
roughly the same skill level and the same knowledge level.
Their expert status is what makes all the difference.

The more you appear in front of your target market, demonstrating your expertise, the
faster your expert status will grow. It’s as simple as that.
It could be through blogs, podcasts, interviews, public speaking, or appearing on
traditional media like radio shows or TV.

The Ultimate Asset

Earlier I spoke about how a list of buyers is a businesses most precious asset. That’s
true, but there’s actually another level up from just a buyers list.

This is something only a few of the savviest internet entrepreneurs have realized. (And
profited like crazy from).

To understand, I should define the true definition of media so we’re on the same page.

A media is any place that aggregates the attention of a definable market segment.

The brand Harley Davidson is media.

TMZ is media.
A Facebook group is media.
The Kardashians are media.
Justin Bieber is media.
Oprah Winfrey is media.
Grant Cardone is media.

They all attract eyeballs from a certain segment of the population and market.

It’s time for YOU to start thinking of yourself as media, too.

If you consider yourself media, your job is to attract the attention of a certain target
market and turn them into your audience.

Focus on building that audience, not on mastering any one type of platform.

Let’s say you’re focused on building a Facebook audience, a Youtube audience, an

Instagram audience, or a Snapchat audience.

Eventually you’ll have to pay every time you want to send them a message…

This is already happening with Facebook, and soon Instagram will be the same way.
Ultimately your goal is to transfer that audience from a place where you’re forced to pay
to reach them, to a place you control. Like an email list, podcast, or blog.

The smartest thing you can do is create an engaged community for your audience to
gather. Why would you do that?

There are many reasons. Here’s a few.

• A community helps build your expert status much faster. Nothing is more
persuasive than dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people singing your praises.

• You get unlimited market research. A community will tell you all about its
hopes and fears, problems and pains. This will help you tailor products
specifically for them and connect with them better in your sales messages.

• Communities will give you a never-ending supply of content for your daily emails,
blogs, videos, and posts.

• Plus, you can sell them stuff. It’s a no brainer.

I learned one of the most important aspects of selling is the “know, like, and trust” factor.
Nothing builds that faster than a community.

Have I sold you on building a community yet? Start today.

I’m taking my own advice by the way, I’m creating a community specifically for this book
called Introverted Selling Society.

Here’s a link to join.

http://bit.ly/2vBJiMT

This is all about leverage.

The idea of leverage goes back to the Pareto principle.

In every activity, 20% of your actions give you 80% or more of your results.

If you’re trying to get big muscles at the gym, it makes sense to do compound
movement exercises like bench press and squats because they use the most amount of
muscle groups. You’ll never get big by doing tiny “isolation” exercises.

Similarly, building a community is one such “high leverage” activity.

In sales, leverage comes from taking your sales presentation and being able to present
it to the masses through advertising.

In this sense of the word, all leverage means is getting more output (income) from your
input (time and effort).

Leverage separates the rich from the poor.

Smart entrepreneurs and salespeople focus on building systems which by definition

provide more leverage than any individual effort on their part.

I’ve developed an entire set of processes which allow me to get rewarded from one
“unit” of output again and again.

Like writing sales pages, setting up email sequences, and creating courses.
These things are the “obvious” ways to leverage your time.

I also record any questions or piece of advice I give and save it for later.

As well as any mistakes I make in my business. I record them all so I can not only avoid
it later on, but I can profit from it.

The Million dollar question…How do you profit from your mistakes?

Easy. By packaging them up and selling them as shortcuts for others following you on
your path. Anyone can do this in any business.

Doing what I just described…

Turning time drains into assets is part of my time investment strategy.

Investing is all about buying assets that pay you income over and over again.

Any piece of content I create, I record it. It can all be used again later on.

The Devils Pitchfork Method

If you’re a service provider, consultant, coach, or anyone who trades their time for
money, the Devil's pitchfork method could change your life.

The three points of the pitchfork are: Consulting, Training, and Products.
Each has varying levels of leverage.

Products are highly leverageable. You can sell them independent of your time.
Training requires your time, but you have greater leverage than consulting because you
can sell one to many. Think group coaching, group training, seminars, and so on.

Consulting requires the most amount of your time, but it is also usually the highest paid
because it’s one to one.

If most of your income comes from your consulting, trading all your time for money, you
have a big opportunity to create leverage and income in your business.

I suggest you start creating products which you can sell independent of your time. One
way to do that is by giving live training, recording it, and packaging it.

You can also record your consulting sessions and sell those as products.

If you wrote a sales page and it didn’t convert, save that page.
Once you get it converting, save that page too.

You can create a product describing how you made it successful.

This is the way you create real “multiple streams of income” in your business.

Another benefit of creating leverage through products and group trainings is the
“virtuous circle” it creates.

Let’s say you’re an expert at dog training.

If 100% of your income comes from training individual customer's dogs, you can start
harnessing the power of leverage for yourself.

You could write daily blog posts or videos on training dogs. From these, you could
package them into a book or a course to sell to people.

That book or course will now sell itself independent of your time.

The best part about these types of products is they will lead to more dog training
business for you.

Similarly, if you had a group dog training, you could record it and use it to generate even
more leads for your services and your books.

The more money you make from high leverage activities, the less you need to spend
your own time doing your thing. That means you can charge more and only work with
the best client's.

One “Dan Kennedy-ism” I learned was “Positioning not Prospecting”.

When you do all these high leverage activities, you won’t have to prospect as hard,
people will come to you.

Of course, you can speed up this process by using direct response advertising.

I have a full course on copywriting which goes into the art and science of writing
advertising that sells for you.

Here are 13 principles of direct response which I dive deep into in my course. You can
find a link at the end of this book.

Consider them like a checklist in your advertising.

Follow these principles and make money.

Ignore them and lose money.

It’s as simple as that.

13 Proven Principles of Direct Response Advertising: How to Turn

Ads Into Money

The 1st principle of Direct Response is to always think “What’s in it for me” for
the person you’re trying to persuade. What are your prospects priorities?

I call this skillset “Tactical Empathy”. It’s learnable and it’s the most important ability you
can cultivate as a copywriter, sales professional, marketer, or entrepreneur.

Of course, it’s important for all your relationships, too.

You see, the reason most products fail is simply because the product creator didn’t start
first with their market, or their prospects.

Most advertising fails the simple “what’s in it for me test”.

Every market has dominant desires and emotions.

When you successfully tap into these desires and channel them into your product, your
ability to sell and persuade skyrockets.

You can become a grandmaster 3rd degree black belt persuader, and you will still
never be able to convince someone to do something they didn’t already want to do.

Yes, you can trick people sometimes, but that’s not what true persuasion is all about.

Aristotle said there are three elements of persuasion: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.
That means Logic, Emotion, and Ethics.
Here’s one of the best definitions of sales and persuasion by Dan Sullivan of Strategic
Coach.

“Getting them intellectually engaged in a bigger future that’s good for them and
getting them to emotionally commit to taking action to get that result.”

You can see Aristotle’s three elements of persuasion in that definition.

The 2nd principle of Direct Response is...

Understand and accept the fact human beings are not rational creatures.
Yes, we have built rocket ships and flown to the moon, but we are still walking, talking
monkeys with meat computers in our heads.

You may think you always behave rationally. You would be wrong about that.

Even the decision to make logical buying decisions is emotional.

Understand this. We buy on emotion and use logical reasons to rationalize our
decisions to others.

On the most fundamental level, everything we do is to either gain pleasure, avoid pain
and conserve energy.

The simplest way to sell something is to make buying pleasurable and not buying
painful. We buy because of what the product will give us, do for us, or what we can
avoid by having the product.

Marketers have discovered the formula for convincing people to buy things a long time
ago. That same formula can be used to win votes, get dates, become a more impactful
public speaker, close deals, the list goes on and on.

Since the time of Aristotle, we have many great advances in the field of persuasion.

Eugene Schwartz, the author of Breakthrough Advertising, which is one of the greatest
books on copywriting and human behaviour ever written, said there are 3 mechanisms
of persuasion in our brain.

1. Desire - The physical, emotional, and mental wants, feelings, hungers, thirsts
which we constantly feel. The power of desire is best channeled in the form of
vivid, tangible pictures. We think in pictures and we’re persuaded by pictures,
not simply words.

Another element of desire is timeless and timely desires.

For example, weight loss is timeless. An apple iPhone 7 is timely.

In the book “Cashvertising”, Drew Eric Whitman identified 8 desires he calls the “Life
Force 8” which we are biologically programmed to pursue.

The Life Force 8 are the following…

-Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension

-Enjoyment of food and beverages
-Freedom from fear, pain, and danger.
-Sexual companionship
-Comfortable living conditions
-To be superior, winning, keeping up with the joneses.
-Care and protection of loved ones
-Social approval.

These 8 alone are so powerful, we get pleasure from seeing other people get them.
We are compelled by our DNA to satisfy the life force 8. Most go back to increasing
our chances for survival and reproduction.

2. Identity - We all desire roles in our lives. It could be executive, entrepreneur,

leader, parent, star salesman, greatest copywriter alive, etc.

Tony Robbins said the 6 human needs are Certainty, Uncertainty, Connection and
Love, Growth, Contribution, and Significance.

So, in your message you should incorporate the added benefit of providing a
significant role.

A role which will increase the perceived significance aka status of your prospect
when he or she buys your product. This is done through powerful subtle cues
primarily via images and videos.

For example,

You’ll often see marketers make videos discussing ordinary business

wisdom, but they’ll be doing casually in front of their Lamborghini, their mansion, or
some exotic place in the world.
This all plays on our unconscious need for more status.

Anything you can do to increase a person’s status, or at least make it a

perceived
increase in status will be very attractive to them.

Anything seen as potentially lowering status will be repulsive to them.

Here is a brief list of positive status triggers you can include in your product.
 Charisma, Style, Power, Wealth, Attractiveness, Intelligence, Happiness.

Sometimes instead of simply trying to make your product include more of these
“positive status triggers”, you can make your message more compelling by implying
your prospect is missing out on these triggers and your product fills that gap.

Show them how not solving their problem is making them look stupid, or unattractive
and they’ll be compelled to buy it.

And here is a list of negative status triggers which kill sales: Fear of looking bad or
looking stupid, and the fear of failing.

You should always watch out for negative status triggers and specifically talk about
how your product, service, or idea will avoid these things.

Schwartz said your product should change your prospects role according to other's.
You also want to change how your prospect feels about themselves once they buy
your product.

Finally, your prospect wants to belong to something, some group. A movement is much
more persuasive than simply offering a product.

3. Belief - We live in the age of skepticism. One thing you should never underestimate
is your prospect’s skepticism of you and your claims. When writing headlines, never
allow your claims to be bigger than your proof.

Proof in advertising comes from a number of things which we will get into in much
greater detail.

Here are a few.

Authority- Speaking from a place of authority in terms of reputation, credentials,

results, or connections.
Social proof - What others are saying about you in terms of testimonials, before and
afters, etc.
Endorsements - What are other people or institutions in positions of authority saying
about you? Think of this as borrowing authority. Side note: becoming a celebrity is
simply a matter of getting enough of the right people talking about you.

Demonstration - Nothing speaks louder than first hand results in your prospects
skeptical mind. In fact, most people are so distrustful of marketing claims and people in
general, authority and social proof are often discredited. People never doubt themselves
though. Show them the results of your product or the benefits it will bring firsthand.
Results - Have you written a sales letter that has sold millions? Have you personally
lost 50 pounds, or gained 35 pounds of muscle in a year? What specific numbers do
you have backing up your claims?

Reputation- Your reputation is perhaps your most powerful asset as a persuader. Are
you known for giving unbiased advice? Are you known as being truthful? Do people
come to you when they have problems? Are you one of the highest paid professionals
in your industry? These are all matters of positioning, and they can be easily
engineered.

The 3rd principle of Direct Response is people are always interested in the
benefits over features. What’s the feeling behind your benefits?

You’re not selling a product, you’re always selling a result. Time saved, money earned,
competitors beaten, a happier state of mind, the release of an itch.

Eugene Schwartz said you’re never selling a product, only a means of satisfying a
particular desire. And the power to sell ultimately comes from the intensity of that
desire.

Once you have a firm understanding of your prospect or your market, you can tailor an
extremely compelling message which magnifies that desire.

Find out the following about your market:

What do they want? What problems are they plagued with? What have they purchased
before? What sales message persuaded them the before? What is the primary emotion
of your market. Their deepest desires and deepest fears?

How can your tie your message to those desired benefits and fears? A major mental
shift is people are buying your message, not the actual product or service.

That’s why persuasion is so powerful. You can literally construct such a compelling
message that you can move millions to buy something, believe something, or act in a
certain way.

The 4th principle of Direct Response is human beings are wired to think in terms
of stories, not hard facts and figures.

When I worked for one of the higher end consulting and marketing firms in my city, we
were paid tens of thousands of dollars to simply create stories. Of course, we told the
client they received more than that, but the basic deliverable was always a story.

Understanding how to tell a good story is one of the most powerful persuasive tools
available.
Some of our most beloved and influential institutions as a society all thrive on stories.
Religions, Hollywood Movies, Television, Politics, the Media, History, etc.

There are a few reasons why.

We are fundamentally a social species. We’re interested in the lives of others. Prior to
the written word, stories were the main tool used for thousands of years to transfer
knowledge. As an evolving species, stories were critical to our survival.

Humans see the world in terms of a narrative. That’s how we think and comprehend
everything around us. That’s why superstition exists in every culture around the world.

In fact, our brains will reject facts and figures which aren’t tied to meaning, or a story.

Want evidence? Name every president of the United States or the year your country
was founded.

I don’t know about you, but I draw a blank.

Care to guess how many people know the story of William Wallace? How many people
know the story of Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus?
The movies “Braveheart” and “Gladiator” did a much better job than our history teacher
ever could.

If you want your message to be “sticky”, tell a story. If you want to improve your own
memory and your prospects memory, tie those facts to a story.

The 5th principle of Direct Response is… in order to persuade, you must first
capture attention.

Because if someone isn’t paying attention to your message, they will never feel
compelled to act.

Have you ever been talking to someone while they’re on their phone?

They may nod and grunt to show they’re paying attention, but I guarantee they’re only
receiving 10% of your message.

Understand who your REAL competitor is today.

It’s not your competition. It’s distractions, procrastination, and indifference.

Facebook feeds, beeping phones, porn, cat videos, memes, and ADD in general.

There is such an unbelievable amount of noise, you need a secret weapon to get
attention.
The first key is to realize the monumental task we are attempting to achieve.

Gaining attention, inspiring interest, successfully convincing a stranger to see things our
way, and then asking them to act right away.

Without ever seeing them! Overcoming those is why copywriters like myself get paid big
bucks.

The second key is to master writing heart stopping, head turning headlines and leads.

The 6th principle of Direct Response is to understand people are lazy and they
want to put off every decision, so you must always inspire action right away.

The reality of successful direct response is you must get people to make a decision right
now.
The problem is, we don’t like making decisions. Given the option to delay, we will
always take it.

You must create urgency and take away the options for delay. This can involve
showing your prospect the consequences of what happens if they decide to take no
action whatsoever.

Two other ways to inspire action are impending deadlines (urgency) or limited
availability of your product (scarcity). Obviously, if these are legitimate they will have a
lot more power than fake urgency and scarcity.

We’ve all seen the sales pages with countdown timers which reset the next time you go
on the page.

Don’t do that. Instead, you can create mini events with engineered scarcity and
urgency. These events can help you sell anything.

For example, if you’re selling an e-book anyone can buy at any time, how do you create
such an event?

You could make an offer where the buyer has three days to buy your book. If they do,
they get a valuable training or bonus. That bonus goes away if they don’t take action.

Your second biggest competitor is human laziness and indecision.

The 7th principle of Direct Response is to always give a reason why you’re talking
to them today, why they should take action, why they should do it now.
Salesmanship in print is simply answering objections before they come up. Reason why
advertising is giving a reason for everything you’re saying.

This idea was perfected by Robert Collier in the early 1900’s. He made millions of
dollars selling all types of products with sales letters.

In those letters, Collier would have elaborate reasons why they were having sales.
If they were selling shirts at a discount, he would talk about how they received a special
discount on their fabric which they were passing onto their customer's.

Or how there were imperfections in the product which were hardly noticeable to most
people, yet they had to sell their products for half off.

One mattress store in particular learned this lesson from Collier. They put out an ad
saying their manufacturer had sewn all their labels on backwards so they had to sell
them for 50% off or take a big loss.

They sold so many mattresses they had to get their manufacturer to sew the labels on
backwards on purpose.

The 8th principle of Direct Response is risk reversal.

Any time one person asks another to take an action, the risk level is almost never equal.

If I ask you to buy a $2000 course, the risk is almost entirely on your shoulders.

Am I a fraud? Will this course actually help you? Can you believe what I’m saying?
What will your spouse, family or friends say about making such an expensive purchase
from some guy on the internet?

Risk reversal is a way of taking all that risk off their shoulders and putting it on yours.
If they’re not 100% happy they can have all their money back.
If they don’t like it, they don’t pay.
Or, if they don’t like it, you’ll pay THEM.

It’s not hard to come up with a good risk reversal strategy. In some cases, risk reversal
works against you, but in most cases, it’ll help you sell more.

Remember if your target consciously or unconsciously perceives the risk to be entirely

on their shoulders, they won’t take action.

Gary Halbert found that offering a “30-day hold” increased his advertisements response
by 300%.

What’s a 30-day hold? It’s where you don’t ask for any money up front.
Your offer is as follows, “I’ll send you this widget for 30 days at no cost to you. If you
don’t like it, send it back. If you do like it, I’ll charge your credit card.”

The 9th principle of Direct Response is to always have a call to action.

In sales, the CTA is the equivalent of asking for the sale or closing.

Remember nothing happens if you don’t ask.

You can present the most compelling case imaginable but without asking for some type
of action it’s just talk.

At best, you just gave them a bunch of information. At worst, you aggravated their
problem and built up desire and gave them no outlet to relieve the pain. Shame on you.

The simple solution is to always tell them what to do next and how to get what you’re
talking about.

You always want to tell them what will happen next after they click that button, or
respond to your ad. Plus, what happens after they buy.

People are used to following directions. Tell them what to do next and don’t be subtle
about it.

The 10th principle of Direct Response is people always want what they can’t
have.

One counterintuitive way to generate action is to build their desire and then take away
the option of buying unless they fit your criteria.

They key is to make your criteria be what your prospect wants for themselves in the
future, not what they currently are.

This process is known as take-away selling and it’s the secret to “flipping the script” on
your prospects and getting them to sell themselves to you.

The best position for you the seller to be in is getting the buyer to start selling
themselves on why they should be allowed to buy from you.

The 11th principle of Direct Response is you must have an offer.

Most advertising fails because there’s no offer.

It’s simply their name, business, and phone number.
Look at most wimpy business cards and you’ll know what I mean.

What’s an offer? Simple.

You give me $10 and I’ll wash your car.
You give me 10 minutes of your time and I’ll teach you how to write an awesome
headline.
You pay for shipping and I’ll send you my product for free.
You get this, for that.

They key is to make this offer so irresistible that it’s easier to say no than yes.

This is easy when you realize that virtually everyone is greedy, some just keep it a
secret better than others. The trick is to let them feel like they’re getting the better half of
the deal.

As a rule, I try to make my offers worth 10 times more than the price I’m asking. This
increases their “irresistibility factor”.

The 12th principle of Direct Response is that people want to be acknowledged,

understood, and praised. Give it to them.

Admit it, you don’t get the respect you deserve. When you speak, people take out their
cell phones and start scrolling through news feeds. Doesn’t that piss you off? You
deserve respect. You work hard for it, don’t you?

If people aren’t listening to you now, that’s only because you haven’t learned and
implemented the principles of persuasion. You just haven’t learned the right information
to make you worth listening to.

It’s been said nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you
care. You want to be speaking one to one in your ads and empathizing with your
prospects.
That’s the first step in developing rapport and it puts a big check mark on “know” from
“know, like. and trust”.

Acknowledge your prospect and show that you know and understand them in your copy.

Here’s the great secret about copy. It’s more about connecting than convincing, at least
at first.
When your prospect reads your copy, they should be saying to themselves,” hey, that’s
me! I have that problem!”

The 13th principle of Direct Response is to enter the conversation already

happening in their mind.
This means knowing what your prospect already feels, believes, and sees in their daily
life.
You must keep a finger on the pulse of your market. What news do they watch? What
books do they read? What are their prejudices, fears, and desires? What are their
dreams and what’s holding them back? How are their desires shifting?

This is the starting point for you to build a bridge from what they currently believe, to
what you want them to believe to buy.

How do you do that?

You start in a place of agreement and take them step by step to taking the action you
want them to take. Eugene Schwartz called this a “stream of acceptances.”

For instance,

If you’re trying to convince someone to move across the country, you must start
backwards from that goal.

First, they must believe where they live is unacceptable.

Next, they need to believe the place where you want them to move is the only option.
Then they must believe they’re able to move.
Finally, they must believe they need to move immediately.

The role of a direct response copywriter.

As a copywriter, my job is to write a sales letter which does the selling for me.

I write copy for my clients to help them get more customers. It can be an email, an ad, a
sales letter or video sales letter, a webinar, or direct mail.

I also develop strategies for getting more money from their existing customers and a lot
more.

If you’re interested, I’ve created a course called the Effortless Persuasion Copywriting
System which goes in depth into these principles plus a lot more.

It’s perfect for you if you have no idea what copywriting or direct response marketing is
and you need a system to make it easy for you.

In that course, I give away my templates, plus you get insider tips and tricks for making
your sales message as persuasive as possible.

I’ll leave you with one last thought about copywriting.

Gary Halbert was probably the best copywriter who ever lived.
His belief was “anything is possible with the right sales letter”.

Anything.

Wrapping up

We’ve gone over all kinds of ways to make your job of selling easier if you’re introverted
like me. Of course, anyone can use this book to become more effective at selling…

If you want to come into my world and connect with me, the best place to do so is
through my Facebook page at Facebook.com/byrnemedia

www.clyxco.com/benbyrne is where you can find all my social media channels. We can
be friends there.

You can read a lot more valuable money-making content at www.BenByrneMedia.com

And you can get some awesome goodies by joining my daily email list at
www.benbyrnemedia.com/freebies

I give priority treatment to people on my email list as far as giving out advice or taking
on client work.
Plus, you can get a first-hand education on how I do my email marketing, so you can
model (not copy) it for your own business.

If you’re interested in learning more about my sales funnel process, I created a program
called the 7 Day Sales Funnel which will show you exactly how to set up a funnel like
mine within one week or less.
Learn about it at www.BenByrneMedia.com/7-day-funnel

If you want to learn more about my copywriting training, check out my Effortless
Persuasion Copywriting System below.

It will show how to turn words into money, even if you’re not a professional copywriter.
www.BenByrneMedia.com/EPS

If you want to become a freelance copywriter like me, this will help you do so.
www.BenByrneMedia.com/freelance-copywriting-templates

And if you need any help with your email sequences, advertising, sales pages, or sales
strategies, feel free to send me a message on Facebook.
Make sure to mention this book so I’ll know to give you priority access to my time.

You can also go to www.BenByrneMedia.com/services to book a free consultation.

Whew, now that was a lot of shameless promotion, wasn’t it?

I’ll end this book with a list of amazing sales, copywriting, and marketing books which
have made me a lot of money.

Here’s a list of recommended reading plus resources I’ve talked about throughout
this book.

Sales books
The Secret of Selling Anything by Harry Browne
No BS Sales Success in the New Economy by Dan Kennedy
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
Secrets of Question Based Selling by Thomas A. Freese
Influence by Robert Cialdini

Negotiating Books (That relate to sales)

Start with No by Jim Camp

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
Getting More by Stuart Diamond

Copywriting books

Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz

The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy
My life in advertising by Claude Hopkns
Scientific advertising by Claude Hopkins
The Robert Collier Letterbook by Robert Collier
The Gary Halbert Letter (not a book, but you can read it for free online)
Tested Advertising Methods (vol 1-4) by John Caples
Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
Ogilvy on Advertising - David Ogilvy
Kickass Secrets of a Marketing Rebel by John Carlton. (this is a home study course)
The Gary Halbert Letter is a great free resource you can check out too.

Marketing Books

No BS Direct Marketing for Non-Direct Marketing Businesses Dan Kennedy.

No BS Trust based marketing by Dan Kennedy.
Dotcom Secrets by Russell Brunson.
Invisible Selling Machine by Ryan Deiss.

Business Mindset books

Getting Everything You Can Out of All that You’ve Got Jay Abraham
NO BS Business Success by Dan Kennedy.
Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins.
The Magic of Thinking Big by David j. Schwartz.
No Excuses by Brian Tracy
The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg
Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
Winning Through Intimidation by Robert Ringer
Blue Ocean Strategy by Renee Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim
Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Most Charismatic Villains by Ben Settle
Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and Dan Kennedy