Why Should They Buy From You?

July/August 1999

“I get up when I fall down.” Paul Harvey, revealing the secret of his success.
Success is being able to hire someone to mow the lawn while you play golf for the exercise. Anonymous.

Dear Friend & Subscriber,

Hi there! Welcome to this issue of your newsletter subscription. This issue will be devoted to two topics of supreme importance: How to Identify Your Market; As Well as Identify Your Unique Buying Advantage! This may sound strange, but most people start with a product and try and find people to sell it to. I aim to show you the safest, most risk-free method of success, with the lowest associated cost.

First find the market, and then find a product they want to buy!

Most people try to sell a product, whether physical or an information product …. totally backwards!

And this is what happens: Firstly, you come up with a great idea about a product that you think people need. You’re convinced that there is a need/desire for it in the market-place. So you go ahead and spend time and money on creating this product. That could be a prototype, or if it happens to be a book, on getting them printed.

Then you start to focus on how you will sell this item. Perhaps you seek out an appropriate store/person to talk to, or you run some ads, get some press releases written and published or whatever it is you see as the next step in the process. After that, you sit back and wait for the phone to ring so you can start collecting your ‘mega-watt’ income!

OH-OH!

If you have unlimited spending capacity, plenty of time to waste and ‘risk’ is no more than a four letter word to you, this too often typical method of trying to make money, can work!

Most of us, however, don’t have access to unlimited funds, don’t have too much time to waste and do have regard for the risk factor. In this issue I’m going to try to get you to think differently!
Firstly and most importantly - do not spend any time thinking about the product, until you’ve discovered the market!

The tightly matched, niche markets are the best and the safest ones to pursue! Take note, I keep referring to and stressing the market, not the product! (at this stage of the game.) You see, the decision you need to make is “What market do I (or does somebody else who’s involved) know inside out? If you’re working with somebody else, choose them on the basis of the specialised knowledge they have … that you don’t.

The markets you want to find are the ones that really, definitely, badly want things! Ie; Mothers want to know how they can rear and nurture their children better, fishermen want to know how they can catch more (or bigger) fish etc.

Make no mistake, there are literally thousands of potential tightly niched markets out there - markets abound! Your first job is to find them, and discover what it is they want, before you even consider what kind of products or information they might buy from you! And notice I said their “wants” as opposed to their “needs”.

The fastest way to a debtor’s prison is to find a NEED and try to fill it!

I mean it! If there’s one thing I hope you really get from this newsletter, this is it! There are different levels of need, starting with the basics … and we’re also talking about survival here. There are food, water, shelter, clothing and even paying taxes. These are the things we need to have or do on a regular basis and without fulfilling most of these needs, our very survival is threatened. To expand on this, while we need to eat in order to survive, we can still do so on food that tastes awful. People from third world countries very often have not much more than the most basic of food to eat, but they can still continue to live on it, albeit their quality of health suffers.

There is a second level, if you like, to these needs. We need food … we prefer good food. We also “need” decent clothes, nice shelter etc. So are these things really needs? We need shelter, but do we need ‘nice’ shelter? What we are talking about here is far more important to us in terms of the Mail Order industry. What we are talking about is . . .

WANTS!

Think about it, the things we need in order to survive, revolve around breathing oxygen, assimilating nutrients etc. Almost everything else outside of that is actually a WANT! Roast Pork instead of a handful of grain or plant roots, a 4 bedroom Federation home rather than a lean-to, a car rather than a donkey, a pure wool suit rather than a piece of sack cloth and the list goes on.

And if we look more closely at those things that define a ‘want’, as opposed to a ‘need’, we find that want is most often defined as something that is desired. Other words that describe a want are crave, wish, fancy, covet etc. None of these words pertain to ‘need’. We can survive without something we wish for, crave or desire.

A want is something people are willing to spend time, money and energy on. Do any of us really need a Mercedes Benz . . . but do we desire one? Do we need three weeks in Tuscany . . . but do we fancy it?

We all seek out those things that we want . . . .and we always will! That will never change . . . it’s simply and forever a component of human nature. Throughout the passage of time, this fact has been demonstrated by nations wanting to conquer other nations, to create wealth, to build monuments to wealth and power. Such actions are motivated by the want for something better, bigger, faster, safer, more beautiful etc. If we humans were motivated only by searching for ‘needs’ then our world would not have advanced beyond a primitive state of hunting and gathering. Progress is borne of our want for more.

In light of all that, now do you see how irrelevant your opinions about what people NEED are?

So let us agree that first you are going to find your market, then you’re going to find what they want!

You can find more markets than you dreamed existed, by simply being alert to the world around you and by going to the library. The reference section in the library will guide you to mailing lists and trade magazines and plethora of information on specialised markets. If you commit your time to half a day a week, every week, going through all these reference sources, I promise you’ll find more markets than you could handle in your lifetime!

And when you do find these magazines, you should start subscribing to their publications, go to meetings, talk to as many of them as you can and discover for yourself, what it is they really want!

So supposing you think that you’ve found some information this market will want, before you begin to formulate your book, tape or whatever, you must ask yourself a supremely important question. This question applies to any person, or business in any field and it’s the question entrepreneur Dan Kennedy puts to all his audiences when he speaks on marketing. This profound question is:

Why should I do business with you, above any and all other options, including doing nothing or whatever I’m doing now?

That’s it folks! The sixty four thousand dollar question . . . that holds the secret to getting sales. And according to Dan, if you are unable to answer this question in a clear and concise manner, then you will have trouble getting sales.

What we are talking about here, is your UNIQUE BUYING ADVANTAGE. Your UBA.

Your UBA needs to have the power to make a quick and deep emotional connection. It is really like a headline. A headline is quick and gets the reader’s attention. Your UBA needs to have the same sort of punch . . . enough to hit them right between the eyes.

Here is a list of ‘claims’ made by specific companies offering their services.

New! Improved! Lowest Rates. Highest Yields. Quality Service. Fast, Friendly and Dependable. Highest Levels of Trust. Established 1979. Widest Array of Products. The Biggest. The Oldest. The First. Client Satisfaction is Our Only Concern. Get - - - - , It Pays. Own a Piece of the Rock. A Breed Apart.

. . . I could go on.

None of these is remotely close to a UBA!

There is nothing in any of the above words or sentences that stir people’s emotions. The people who wrote them obviously want other people to feel an emotional connection, but wanting them to is not going to make a bit of difference. The people who read those words want only what they want.

So lets move on. How do you formulate your UBA? What do you say in it that is so compelling that people want to know more? Dan Kennedy says that when somebody hears your UBA, their reaction should be “Really? How do you do THAT?”

Even when you think you have what the market wants all worked out, you still have to communicate to them that you have just what they want! If you don’t … they just won’t buy it!

And in order to communicate this important message to your market, you must have a compelling UBA that gets an emotional response . . . which shows up in your
merchant account!

Look again at those lame “UBA’s” I listed for you a moment ago. They are meaningless. Does “New and Improved” create an emotional connection for you? Do you really think that by claiming that you have “A Trustworthy & Dependable Weight Loss Programme For Women” the market is going to come stampeding to your door?

Fat chance! (Pardon the pun.) A UBA will cannot make people drop everything they’re doing, if it doesn’t extract an immediate and powerful emotional reaction.

For example, one of my UBA’s (you can have as many as you like), is based on the fact that I know most people feel frustrated because they know they’re are good at what they do, but they don’t have enough clients. So I say things like

“They All Laughed When I Ran That Little $40 Ad …But When I Got 81 Leads!”

or

“How To Get A Flood Of Prospects To Call You! No More Cold Calls!”

Do you see how these comments create an emotional feeling? Can you imagine how they push the buttons (of emotional pain) of my market? Cold calling is one of the most hated jobs on earth. Can you also hear one of my prospects responding to either of these sentences with “Really? How do you do that?”

What are some other ideas for UBA’s? Since niche markets are specific, you need to push the hottest buttons that exist for that market. Here are some random ideas, which may or may not apply to you, but they might help you to come up with your own ideas.

For Real Estate Buyers: How To Buy Seven Pieces of Real Estate in Seven Years and Retire Independently Wealthy Without Using Any Of Your Own Money

For dog Owners: How To Train Your Dog To Be a TV Star And Make More Money Than You

For Restaurant owners: How To Train Wait Staff To Serve Twice As Much Food

For truckies: How To Increase Your Speed Without Getting Tickets - Guaranteed!

For caterers: How To Sell Twice As Many Parties With Twice the Profits.

For singles: How To Meet The Love Of Your Life in 60 Days or Less

And I could go on.

If the market really wants this information and you give them a good reason to buy - because your message is tightly matched and so unique, you will be successful beyond your wildest dreams! If you are serious about finding and meeting people’s needs, you won’t do it by using boring and meaningless slogans. Use the first method, you can test cheaply and your chances for success are high!

If you’re unsure about the likelihood of a product in terms of whether it will meet a want as opposed to a need, or if you’re not sure about your UBA, or have other questions, we’re here to help. If you haven’t used your consultation coupon. Please do so.

The parade of would-be ‘inventors’ passing through my office never ends.

Because of the nature of my consulting practice, I get dozens of people each month, with products in need of marketing. In many cases, the inventor has poured heart and soul, not to mention his last penny, into publishing his book or manufacturing his do-dad . . . without having the faintest idea who his market will be or how he will get it to those presumed-to-exist customers. Now the ‘inventor’ is devoid of either resources or a business!

Sure, every rare once-in-a-while, a product will appear which finds it’s way to the market-place without a hitch and goes on to make a fortune for it’s originator. But the odds of this happening are right up there with Lotto and lightening strikes. It is backwards marketing!

IF YOU COULD HAVE JUST ONE GREAT ASSETT, ONE ADVANTAGE . . .
WHAT WOULD IT BE?

The great Gary Halbert does this exercise in his seminars: Imagine that you have a you-beaut new food product, or a fantastic restaurant concept. If you could choose just one thing to give you the edge - to give you the advantage, what would you choose? I’ve heard people say . . . “A famous celebrity spokesperson to endorse it” … “A fantastic recipe” . . . “A clever name” . . . and so on. These are all product focused!

Gary’s answer to such whims is “I’ll give you all that and still whip you - if I can have just one thing - A STARVING CROWD! Now that’s Marketing focused as opposed to product focused.

The simple fact is even sometimes with a bad product, you can still make money (I don’t advocate it!) if there is a starving crowd! Case in point are some (not all) of the mobile lunch trucks that target industrial areas with their junk food. The food is poor quality, but they do the business because they have a captive, hungry crowd!

FIRST FIND YOUR HUNGRY CROWD!

Look at this way; an architect does not invest months of his time in designing a house from scratch, creating blueprints, assembling the costs . . . and then finding the client! No, he gets his/her client, finds out their needs and wants are, how much they are willing to or can afford to pay, then he works on filling those criteria. He gets his customer first!

PICK A “CROWD”, YOU UNDERSTANF THOROUGHLY, SHARE PASSIONS & EXPERIENCES WITH, SHARE A ‘LANGUAGE’ WITH AND HAVE EMPATHY & CREDIBILITY WITH!

Don’t be lazy about your homework. Get a copy of detailed expenditure items, (Document No 6535.0) from your local Bureau of Statistics, maybe better still order a copy of standard rates and data services from the USA. The sale and stats will perform much the same in Australia.

Use SRDS to find out who has bought what, in what numbers, from advertising in what media, at what price points. Check old SRDS to determine the demographics of your chosen market: ages, sex, income, marital status etc. Read all the magazines your market reads. Watch the same TV shows. Attend the same events they do. Take an interest in the same things that concern them. Gather every fact, statistic, every article, every successful ad created by someone else selling to your market. Everything that will enhance your “oneness” with your market.

Then become the architect who strives to satisfy that market’s most urgent, most emotive, most ardent needs and desires.

SUDDENLY THE QUESTION OF PRODUCT BECOMES EASY WHEN YOU START WITH A MARKET’S NEEDS AND DESIRES.

There are hundreds of different kinds of profitable ‘information products’ (and services) you can create, inexpensively ‘manufacture’, publish on -demand and market. But putting together SUCCESSFUL products gets much easier (and faster) when you are really responding to a market.

Imagine this: someone hands you a list of 50 questions he/she wants answers to and they will pay you $1,000,000. 00 to go and find the answers and provide them with this information in the most appropriate form.

You have a customer, you also know that customer will happily pay, and you know exactly what he/she wants. Can you collect the million dollars? Highly likely. Well you get into that very same position, with the exception that 10,000 people each giving you $100 instead of just one person giving you the million $$. If you look at this as being a formula, the information, - the “product” - is relatively easy; finding the person willing to give you the million dollars for it is somewhat tougher. It would seem pretty stupid to assemble a pile of information and then look for someone who would buy it for one million dollars, wouldn’t it?

MAL EMERY.