2nd Gary Halbert Call Part 3 of 4

Gary: When a 2 for 1 be. Well if you are talk­ing about two let­ters in the same enve­lope like these two it’s, it is actu­ally you are going to be very dis­ap­pointed as a result of that.

Should we even attempt that the answer is yes but you, you should attempt, do I, do I know of a case where it has been attempted suc­cess­fully. Ah, no I don’t but I bet it has and yes I think you should attempt it, but the way you should attempt it I believe is you should try and sell them the bone den­sity test­ing first, and with the markup and then go from there to the high price thing.

What I would actu­ally do is tell peo­ple they could take a free hear­ing test over the tele­phone and I think you’d have a much bet­ter chance on that. But I think you could make some money at this, but for sure you only sell, want to sell one thing at a time.

Okay. Gary, I sell $197.00 home study course online. When some­one exits from my order page, what strat­egy do you sug­gest: (1) down sell; (2) spe­cial dis­counts; (3) sur­vey of why leav­ing; (4) other. I need to know, I know I need to test but which one would you sug­gest I start with.

Peo­ple are going to do tests that prove what I am about to say is wrong in some cases, but in most cases I think I’m, what I’m about to say, most cases will be right, and what this guy should do is get rid of his order page and say it’s easy to order. All you have to do is call 1–800 what­ever. And, they, you, you should just get rid of the order page.

Okay, here’s another one. What is an exam­ple of a three-​​step sequence on the web? Well, that would be a web­site prop­erly designed, and if it is prop­erly designed it is a sales let­ter and then it would offer them to make a tele­phone call to get a free book or free report/​sales let­ter and then that would offer them the oppor­tu­nity to buy some­thing and you could con­tinue it into step after step.

And then the other step should be fol­low ups to the peo­ple that rose their hand and actu­ally I know that a lot of you peo­ple on here are only inter­ested in online mar­ket­ing and I’d like to say some­thing about that.

You should not think of your­self as an online mar­keter or a direct mail mar­keter or a news­pa­per mar­keter or a tele­vi­sion mar­keter or a radio mar­keter. You should think of your­self as a mar­keter and you should mar­ket wher­ever you can make money.

You know, if, if direct mail can make you money, maybe you should also be on the web and make money there, and maybe you should also be in mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers and make mon­eythere, and maybe you should make money, you should be on tele­vi­sion mak­ing money, but I do think that you should sequence those and I want to say one thing for you.

Another thing there are only three things that are involved in mar­ket­ing. There is the prod­uct, the pitch and the deliv­ery sys­tem. Now the prod­uct is of course what­ever the prod­uct is. The pitch is the, the, the sales piece that sells it in what­ever form it appears: in the form of a let­ter, a mail order ad, a piece of web copy; and the deliv­ery sys­tem is the deliv­ery sys­tem for the sales pitch.

There is an inter­net. The inter­net is really basi­cally as far as mar­ket­ing goes a deliv­ery sys­tem. Tele­vi­sion is a deliv­ery sys­tem. Direct mail is a deliv­ery sys­tem and I would like to write for you the deliv­ery sys­tems that will most likely give you the best ROI (Return on Investment).

Num­ber one, you absolutely can­not beat direct mail fol­lowed by news­pa­pers, and after direct mail and news­pa­pers, I don’t know where it would go from there but I actu­ally think other than maybe match­book cov­ers; the inter­net is the weak­est deliv­ery sys­tem in the world.

Ah, you know I was recently work­ing with a guy who is mak­ing a lot of money because he was mail­ing 30 mil­lion let­ters a day, emails a day, to gen­er­ate leads and he would get about 3,000 responses which were worth about $10.00 a piece for him.

Now that game is pretty much over unless you want to go to jail, but do you know how out of 30 mil­lion what per­cent­age or response to the 3,000 is, and if some­body could fig­ure out on the call real quick. But it is like 1/​100 of 1 per­cent and I recently, my most recent lead gen­er­at­ing ad was done by direct mail and we were get­ting a 7 per­cent response and you take 1/​100 of 1 percent.

So if I got 1 per­cent and I was doing a hun­dred times more leads than he is for the same amount of con­tact and since we were get­ting seven it was 700 times more. Not 700 per­cent more; 700 times more. And, what it is, is a mat­ter of math. And peo­ple get lost on the inter­net because they think it is “free or at least very, very cheap.” You want a, you want a good way to make money?

Take great inter­net sales let­ters and trans­fer them into print. Just steal them and trans­fer them into print.

Michel: That’s exactly what’s hap­pen­ing right now with a lot of copies that I have writ­ten is that -

Gary: It’s going to be hap­pen­ing more and more because I’m tak­ing some of your copy.

Michel: Hey, yeah. Well, a lot of the guys that are actu­ally going to, that have actu­ally writ­ten copies for and we found out that they, they’ve worked really well, they’ve sold very well, there’s a really high con­ver­sion rate, they’re now con­vert­ing those into direct mail pieces and using them in direct mail and, as I, yeah, yeah, that’s a great, great, great sug­ges­tion there Gary.

Gary: Okay. Here’s one. How do you sug­gest mail­ing busi­nesses using direct mail? Would you use the busi­ness address or try find­ing the owner’s home address? Would you use an enve­lope or post cards for the most effec­tive response?

I actu­ally, on business-​​to-​​business, would absolutely use Fed­eral Express but in line with the ques­tion, I would, I would never send post cards to business-​​to-​​business peo­ple. I would use envelopes and because peo­ple change so much, what you want to do is address it not to an individual.

The first thing I would do, unless it’s a giant mail­ing, is I would call the com­pany and say who is in charge of buy­ing wid­gets and then I would direct my mail to that person.

Now, if you’re mail­ing like a mil­lion peo­ple and that’s an imprac­ti­cal thing to, I would write to, um, you know, ah, the wid­get buyer for ABC Com­pany, prob­a­bly. And, our, you know, or the adver­tis­ing depart­ment or some­thing. But don’t send post cards. And don’t sent an enve­lope and try send­ing Fed­eral Express at least if it’s worth any­thing at all.

Okay, let me see what else I got here.

What do you con­sider the most impor­tant fac­tors in cre­at­ing pack­ag­ing and marketingE-​​books online via sales let­ter web­sites? Ah, and, ah, he said he’s a busi­ness part­ner of Tim­o­thy Brum­lick. He told me to tell you hello. Tim­o­thy Brum­lick is also a good friend of mind so I’d appre­ci­ate it if you would say hello back to Tim­o­thy Brumlick.

Tim­o­thy Brum­lick has more stamps on his pass­port than Kissinger. I think he’s in an aver­age of three dif­fer­ent coun­tries a week. Ah, but to get back to the ques­tion. Ah, cre­at­ing pack­ag­ing and mar­ket­ing E-​​books, I think E-​​books should be 8 « by 11 typed let­ters with a kind of a nice cover on them. Um, you know, a type­set that you might know more about that than I would Mike, I mean, you know?

Michel: Um, the for­mat that has been the win­ning for­mat for E-​​books is in Adobe.pdf for­mat and the rea­son why is because Adobe.pdf which means portable doc­u­ment for­mat is down­load­able or use­able or read­able on pretty much every PC out there, on every com­puter out there, on every MAC com­puter out there.

Most of my E-​​books are on Adobe.pdf for­mat and, and I, and basi­cally what you usu­ally do, and can very eas­ily do is you buy, first of all, and, and, and every **** info­pre­neur on the inter­net has this is either a pdf con­verter soft­ware or have bought Adobe.pdf soft­ware and you, you can actu­ally type out your book in any, you know, just like a reg­u­lar, nor­mal book, and then you would con­vert it into a pdf for­mat. Um, that is the best way to do it .

And, and, what I usu­ally do is, ah, we have, ah, what I do also when I write sales let­ters for exam­ple, is I cre­ate cov­ers for the book even if it’s an intan­gi­ble prod­uct. I sort of try to get peo­ple a sort of an idea or a feel­ing of what it is as if it was tan­gi­ble and then they would eas­ily access that book that way and when you print it out, it also prints out exactly the way it looks. When you look at that on your com­puter, it’s 8.5 x 11 and it looks like a nor­mal stan­dard book.

Gary: Um, you bet­ter sit down for what I’m about to say but I’m going to blow your mind. If you send me some­thing in pdf I can down­load it. I can actu­ally do that. Can you imag­ine that?

Michel: ****. I am totally blown away.

Gary: It says, hi, guys, what do you specif­i­cally do to get into the mind of your prospect. You know what you do is you just do a lot of work. You read the books that they read, you mag­a­zines that they read, if pos­si­ble you go out and talk to those people.

Ah, it’s just work. I mean, you have to find out what they’re all about and, ah, and you go on the inter­net and research them and look at the other appeals that are being made to them and, um, it, it’s just work. The answer to many of these ques­tions is just work. Ah -

Michel: Well, here’s my lit­tle short­cut. I, I do copy some­times for peo­ple like, you know, ah, not that I have writ­ten copy for you Gary, but peo­ple who are like you who are not really peo­ple who, who type out all these answers to my big long questionnaire.

They pre­fer to do it on the phone and what they do is they record the call and get it tran­scribed and, but that’s not where you stop. What you do is when you inter­view them, you try to get them to open up the flood­gates of pas­sion about their prod­uct and what I do often is when I get into a phone call, I three-​​way the call with another ser­vice called idic​tate​.com, I-​​D-​​I-​​C-​​T-​​A-​​T-​​E dot COM at a 1–800 num­ber that you call. It’s free, toll free.

Ah, of course, they charge you a penny a word but they, they have a real live tran­scrip­tion­ist. You know, a lot of these speak­ing soft­ware that, that actu­ally con­verts your speech into text, if they all goof it up, you have to train it and all that stuff, well, idic­tate is actu­ally done by real peo­ple. And they send it back to you within an email attach­ment within a few hours but, and what I do is I, I three-​​way the call with that service.

What I do is when I speak with the client, I ask a few ques­tions and get the ball rolling. Some­times it’s a lit­tle slow until I get them to become really pas­sion­ate about their prod­uct and I, they, they’re actu­ally sell­ing me on the prod­uct. And you can actu­ally sense the, the enthu­si­asm they have for their product.

And, you know, copy­writ­ing is like what Zig Ziglar said, ah, you know, it’s sell­ing and it’s sell­ing in print and he said, it’s trans­fer­ring the enthu­si­asm you have for your prod­uct into the minds and hearts of your prospects. Well, when I do that, I get this tran­scrip­tion, you know, this tran­script in my email which is basi­cally half of my copy writ­ten right there.

Gary: That’s bril­liant. Ah, um, you know a year from now I will giv­ing, I will be giv­ing peo­ple that same type of advice and tak­ing credit for it?

Michel: I know you Gary.

Gary: Okay. All right.

Michel: Hope­fully I’ll be retired and they won’t **** there.

Gary: Ah, you men­tioned in your, lis­ten, I, this, this ques­tion, before I read it to you. I, I gotta, I gotta tell you, I had some­thing hap­pen that, you talk about mak­ing your day. This made my year. There is a guy named Eric Wein­stein. He used to be my list­ings broker.

And he had files of hun­dreds of con­trol pieces, ads, direct mail and every­thing, and he, he’d gone on to do some­thing else. And he was about to throw them away. These are all win­ning sales pieces. And he said, I thought you’d, I’d give you a call and see if you’d want them before I threw them away.

Michel: Oh, yeah.

Gary: And I imme­di­ately sent some­body up to get them and it’s two giant files of proven win­ning things, the best swiped file you can humanly imagine.

And here’s the guy’s ques­tion. Hi Gary. That was a fan­tas­tic tele­con­fer­ence a cou­ple weeks ago. I wanted to thank you for your com­plete no BS, tell it like it is style. You men­tioned in your talk the list bro­ker who had given you all those fold­ers of tested let­ters and copy.

My ques­tion: How can I get my hands on them? Could I fly down from Indi­anapo­lis, bring a copy machine and copy them myself? Seems to me there might be gold to be panned in them there fold­ers. Thanks and regard. A new Sir Gary fan.

The guy’s name is Mark Roselus. Mark, you can come down and copy them as long as you make a copy for me because I intend to sell this swiped file and **** swiped file and I am never going to get around to the time to do it myself. You know, I actu­ally hire peo­ple to go to the bath­room for me now because I have so lit­tle time.

Michel: ****.

Gary: So, the answer is yes, you can do that. Ah, let’s see the next ques­tion. Ah, they may not be world-​​class, but the let­ters I write or at least aver­age or bet­ter. How­ever, the response rates are always less than prof­itable. Where can I get more respon­sive lists?

I’m gonna delete that guy. I’m not gonna men­tion that guy’s name, but, um, ****, I, I, I, I think, ah, the let­ters you write are not at least aver­age or bet­ter. Um, if the response rates are always less than prof­itable, ah, I think you might want to go back to the grind­stone and as far as get­ting more respon­sive lists, what you need to do is dia­logue with a good list bro­ker and, and let them guide you on the list. Um, but, ah, ****, they, ah, I’m not going to make any fur­ther com­ments on that.

Michel: ****.

Gary: Um, Michel and Gary, what exer­cises would you all sug­gest for a novice copy­writer to prac­tice get­ting into the head of a reader, and get­ting to know the tar­get audi­ence, and that.

I think I’ve already asked, ah, answered that. It’s just a mat­ter of work.

Um, this one. How can I raise my prices sig­nif­i­cantly for a high-​​ticket ser­vice with­out los­ing too many customers?

Um, the first thing you need to do is you need to make your prod­uct or ser­vice more valu­able. And, by the way, if some of you would like to have a rela­tion­ship with me, a busi­ness rela­tion­ship and get on the good side of me, I’m look­ing for peo­ple to help me do some of this. I want to cre­ate a, hm, course on how to win in online poker. And I would love some­body that plays online poker to, I don’t know, you know, you’ll know what I’m talk­ing about, Mike.

I know what I want but I don’t know how to describe it. I would like to cap­ture what’s hap­pen­ing on the screen so I could put it on a DVD or video and adver­tise you will see actual hands being played, do you under­stand what I’m talk­ing about?

Michel: Gary, you’re, you’re, what you’re talk­ing about is a screen-​​capturing pro­gram. I use it when I do cri­tiques for copy and I deliver it online. It’s a pro­gram called can­ta­sia and that pro­gram is actu­ally avail­able, is at a web­site called tech​smith​.com.

You down­load it, you, and when you load up the pro­gram you click on the one that says record and it actu­ally records what’s going on on your screen at that point.

Gary: And, and, and, not just frame by frame, but like in, like the move­ment and everything.

Michel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, every­thing. It’s, it’s, it’s actu­ally the move­ments, the clicks, um, ah, and most of the courses that you see now, the info­prod­ucts that you see online like John Reese’s, Mike Kern and Ed Dale are all done with can­ta­sia. It’s, it’s an absolutely won­der­ful, I use it all the time.

Gary: Lis­ten. I have my, the, the young man I’m men­tor­ing on the phone and I want to make sure he got that, so would you give that web­site again?

Michel: Absolutely. Tech­smith. T as in Tom, E, C as in Cather­ine, H, S as in Sam, M as in Mike, I, T as in Thomas, H dot com. Tech​smith​.com. The soft­ware is called cam­ta­sia and I’ll, I’ll give you an example.

My web­site, I have a web­site called the​copy​doc​tor​.com and that web­site is a mem­ber­ship site where you pay 30 bucks a month and you actu­ally watch me live going through a sales let­ter or a web­site and you actu­ally see my mouth move­ments, you actu­ally see me write the copy but I also have a micro­phone and I record what I say and I cri­tique the copy and I tell it, I, I, I actu­ally tear the copy apart but the beauty is that you actu­ally under­stand what’s going through my mind and what I see. It’s like if you were look­ing over my shoul­der as I’m actu­ally going through the sales let­ter so that is the soft­ware, cantasia.

Gary: Ah, lis­ten, Mike, that is great infor­ma­tion and this guy, Caleb, I’m work­ing with, he’s really not the sharpest knife in the drawer so could you pos­si­bly give him that web­site again? I’m teas­ing him obvi­ously, cause.

Michel: How about if I just email it?

Gary: Oh, okay. Just, just email it to me and, or to him, or both of us. Okay?

Michel: I will ****.

Gary: All right. Will you talk about the first sen­tence, para­graph of a let­ter, not that it’s impor­tant, that’s obvi­ous; but your approach to writ­ing it. Maybe some extem­po­ra­ne­ous exam­ples for some fic­ti­tious prod­ucts or services.

You know, there is one open­ing line that is so good. I almost always use it. And it, it’s, you know, it, it’s, I’m get­ting bored with it, but you know, there’s an old adver­tis­ing truth, is that you will get bored with your cam­paign before the read­ers do and here it is. If you are inter­ested in get­ting rid of your arthri­tis pain, this will be the most impor­tant mes­sage you will ever read.

Here’s why. If you are inter­ested in mak­ing money in online poker, this is the most impor­tant mes­sage you will ever read. Here is why. If you are inter­ested in how to make money online with­out hav­ing a com­puter, this will be the most impor­tant mes­sage you will ever read. Here is why. I can’t improve on that one. And, um, that’s, that’s a good one. It, it, then, ah -

Michel: Well, what I usu­ally do, Gary, if you don’t mind, what I usu­ally do is I try to start a story, um, and, and the way I do that is by say­ing, you know, please, you know and you can say it in dif­fer­ent ways, but it’s like, stop what you’re doing, put down what­ever you’re hold­ing in your hands and just read every sin­gle word that I am about to read because this is going to and this major bring promise that I’m, that I’m making.

Ah, whether it’s, you know, if you want to start out with, this one is the most impor­tant let­ter, I do use that a lot. Ah, I, I, I’ve done this form exam­ple on ****, traf­fic secrets for John Reese, which is I urge you to lock the door and take the phone off the hook and grab your favorite bev­er­age and just sit down and study every sin­gle let­ter, word of this let­ter because it’s about to change your life and here’s why.

Gary: Okay. Um, the, um, I’ve lis­tened to many of your inter­views and tapes, etc., etc., etc., and read all of your newslet­ters and so forth, and so forth. It is obvi­ous you have a lot of ideas, likely more than you can do any, any­thing with; hence, my question.

When you have say five things to work with that all seem excit­ing and inter­est­ing to you, how do you pri­or­i­tize what to do? I tend to work on all five and get bogged down in all of that. Do you have a process that you go through to deter­mine what to work on next?

You know, that was some­thing that vexed me for a long time. But when I was in Los Ange­les and John Carl­ton was work­ing with me, we came up with what we call Oper­a­tion Money Suck and, and we would just sit there and think what thing can we work on that’s gonna make us the most money in the least amount of time and that’s it. That’s what we go for. And I think that’s the best way to pri­or­i­tize there is.

Okay, um, now. Here’s a guy. Gary, there’s so much stuff out there, I don’t know whether I’m com­ing or going. Even if my bud­get was $5,000.00 a month. I don’t know what’s good and what’s not. This host or that host. This auto respon­der or that one. This men­tor or that one. The dumb webs, this dumb web­site or that one. The deal of the cen­tury or maybe all of the next 300 deals.

Bot­tom line, this is BS, so guess what? I’m not buy­ing any­thing. If I do the next offer will be bet­ter. More expen­sive and use­ful bonuses will come with the third. And, but then two or three will come with promises to spill their guts and give you free all the tools they ever bought or stole for $699.00.

But if you wait three weeks they will sell you all that plus all their buddy **** for the spe­cial price of $4.00. Man, it’s like incom­ing fire and nowhere to hide. Maybe if I took a vaca­tion when I returned you might send me back the money for the newslet­ter that I can now get for free.

Michel: ****.

Gary: This is the ****. You know, um, I don’t, I don’t think there is an answer to that ques­tion. Um -

Michel: I think you did answer it already before when you said that you know, that the peo­ple that actu­ally do make it are the peo­ple that spend some money on their own self-​​education.

Gary: Yeah.

Michel: And, you know, whether some­thing becomes free in the future is not an impor­tant thing because the fact is if you buy some­thing right now, and I’m not say­ing for, for, for buy­ing stuff that has been pirated. To me, peo­ple who actu­ally buy prod­ucts and then go on E-​​bay and then sell it and, and, and actu­ally will­fully defraud peo­ple or will­fully steal stuff, that’s, that’s, that’s a whole dif­fer­ent idea. And, and, and, and many of these suck shit by the way.

But if you actu­ally have a prod­uct that later on becomes free, um, that’s fine, because at least you were the first one to buy the prod­uct and start putting it into use and if you’re not mak­ing enough money from that to buy the “next best thing,” then there’s some­thing wrong someplace.

Gary: Yeah. And you know what you need to under­stand is that you’re liv­ing in the world you’re liv­ing in and stop being a whiner about it. You know, ah, two days ago, I, I, I have a cou­ple of cell phones and I use pre­paid cell phones. And, ah, I can usu­ally fill them up by just using my credit card but, you know, they, Cin­gu­lar bought Bell South, they made it more dif­fi­cult so I found a retail loca­tion and I wanted to buy, put $100.00 in pre­paid min­utes on my card and they, they asked me, do you want to spend $20.00, $60.00 or $100.00. I said, I want to spend $100.00.

They said fine, that will be $110.00. I didn’t even ask them why it was $110.00. I, you know, it’s not the clerk’s fault, it’s what­ever, you know. I mean, it, some­body came up with a con­cept I think that is a good one. Every­body has a men­tal limit of money they’re, they, they’re not going to think about. You know, I mean, ah, you know, if I want something.

Here’s an obvi­ous one, an exam­ple. If I want some­thing and it costs a dime, I’m not going to think about whether I should be pay­ing a nickel for it. Ah, and, you know, there, there’s a cer­tain point; you should estab­lish your point where you’re not going to waste a lot of time and energy, some dol­lar amount, ah, that, um, the, ah, on that. The um, I want to, um, I’m about wrapped up with these ques­tions. Do you have any more?

Michel: Oh, yeah, I, I, actu­ally, I’m get­ting some more right now as we speak. Um, didn’t you, first of all, I can ask *** you a few more but did you want to add any­thing else?

Gary: Yeah, I do. I do. Um, I’d like to switch to some­thing kind of seri­ous for a moment. Um, a lot of peo­ple ask the ques­tion about what is the dif­fer­ence between writ­ing for women and as opposed to writ­ing for men. And it’s just a vari­a­tion of my customer’s are different.

What is the dif­fer­ence between writ­ing for rocket sci­en­tists and peo­ple who like to buy Rap music? Ah, what is the dif­fer­ence between writ­ing to car­pen­ters and for peo­ple who are writ­ing to com­puter geeks?

The truth is there is no dif­fer­ence what­so­ever to writ­ing any of the group. What you need to do is to be impart­ing infor­ma­tion that’s impor­tant to those peo­ple in the clear­est way humanly possible.

And I’m going to give you a real good exam­ple of that. I’m going to guess that most of the peo­ple on this tele­phone call are not inter­ested in knit­ting. So I want you to imag­ine that I wrote the most bril­liant add you can ever imag­ine on the sub­ject of knit­ting and you’re read­ing in USA Today or some­place and I offer a great price which is a frac­tion of where you buy it oth­er­wise and the copy is scintillating.

Prob­a­bly no mat­ter how good that copy is, you’re not going to buy the knit­ting machine. In fact, you’re not even going to read the copy. Now let’s, let’s switch to another exam­ple. Let’s say that you’re a man and your wife is preg­nant and she’s pretty close to being due and you have to be some­place; you just have to be. But you have your cell phone at the ready and you, you have her or some­one else stand­ing by to tell you if the, if your, your baby is being born. And lo and behold…

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
• The Real Problem With The Flaw of Attraction
• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

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