Jay Abraham is a fanatic. He will do just about anything to persuade people to convert what is between their ears into money.
In this case, he has compiled a series of real-life "how-to" examples from his followers on how they went from almost no money to success. How? By implementing his techniques.
Later in this report, I provide links to these collections of case studies. They are free -- my favorite price!
There is nothing touchie-feelie about Abraham's techniques. They are practical. They are repeatable. Best of all, they can be implemented by small businesses and start-up businesses.
Abraham has set himself an goal. He wants people to maximize their business income. He wants them to maximize their money/time ratio.
Hardly anyone believes him. Let me explain.
Imagine that in front of your place of business, there is a gutter. But it is a very special kind of gutter. It is a fairy tale gutter. Every few minutes, a $100 bill floats down it.
Like most people, you don't spend a lot of time looking at gutters. But Jay does -- not because he's interested in gutters. He's interested in $100 bills.
He stands on his side of the street, where his particular gutter has $1,000 bills, and he yells at you.
"Hey. Hey! Yes, you. Did you know that there are $100 bills floating down that gutter? Look down. Wait a couple of minutes. One will float by."
To which you of course respond mentally: "Nut case."
He keeps yelling.
"Look down. Pay attention. See if I'm right. The money is there. You just have to pay attention."
You look down for five seconds, just to get him to shut up. No $100 bill. You're vindicated. You go back in your office.
Three hours later, you get an e-mail. It's from Jay. There are ten attachments. The letter says, "Click the attachments. See what's there." So, you click.
There are snapshots of what is obviously your gutter. In the middle of each snapshot is a $100 bill. You conclude that he put it there and took a photo ten times.
He didn't.
I have learned personally from Jay how to spot those $100 bills. I have watched him do it too many times.
TWENTY-THREE YEARS WATCHING JAY ABRAHAM AT WORK
I was a well-established publisher in the hard-money newsletter industry when Jay showed up in the early 1980s with his marketing strategy: high perceived value, bonus- laden, discount introductory subscriptions. It changed the way our industry marketed its products.
I have watched Jay become the developer and marketer of the most heavily attended high-priced marketing seminars in the country.
I once interviewed him for three hours on tape, and then watched in amazement as that interview, in his capable hands, became a lead generator that promoted a $15,000 seminar that drew over one hundred paying attendees.
I attended that seminar and benefited greatly from it.
I have marketed Jay's seminars and his encyclopedia to my own subscribers.
As someone who has been writing direct-mail copy for over 30 years, I have sat with a volume of his 6,431-page encyclopedia in my lap, a yellow highlighter in my hand, day after day, re-learning the basics. This investment of time pays off every hour -- several times an hour.
That amazing publication engages my mind on every page. Over and over I think, "Oops; I forgot. I had better use this." I have had to put the volume on the floor, so that I could go to my computer to modify some part of a multi-step ad campaign that I have worked for two years to prepare.
I hope you will have similar experiences as you read my reports: a series of 115 brief, practical, true stories from business owners (mostly) who have put Jay's marketing principles to work in their companies.
As you read them, you will think, "Oops; I forgot. I had better use this."
How useful is Jay's material? Let an old pro tell
you. I am an old pro in the direct-response copywriting
industry. I have used my skills to market my own material.
I know what I am doing. I have put millions of dollars of
my own money on the line and in the mail and watched it
come back, multiplied (most of the time, anyway). That's
why I appreciate what Jay has done. No one else has
brought as many insights to direct-response marketing. No
one else has made his clients more money by seeing the Big
Picture and then applying it to their own specific
situations.
JAY'S HOT SEATS
Jay Abraham has the exceedingly rare gift of almost instantaneously seeing workable solutions to people's marketing problems. I have seen him perform in front of an audience. He makes marketing problems disappear. He is the David Copperfield of marketing problems.
He conducts "hot seats" at his $5,000 to $25,000 seminars. He invites a business-owning attendee to sit in front of the crowd and describe his major marketing problem. Off the top of his head, Jay solves it. The bigger the business, and the bigger the problem, the more valuable the seminar fee is, if a person gets into that hot seat.
The audience gets to match wits with Jay. Every attendee sits there, presumably thinking to himself: "How would I solve this problem?" He can test his own problem- solving ability by comparing his solution -- if any -- to Jay's. This is great practice for the attendees. I suspect that the experience also generates lots of post- seminar marketing plan revisions by attendees.
I don't know what Jay charges per hour for consulting these days, but there is no question in my mind that the hot seats generate lots of post-seminar consultation income for him -- not that he needs it. But Jay likes a challenge. He would probably do it for free on a limited basis, but, not being a fool, he charges what he's worth.
You should, too. Here is a representative example: a consultant who had priced her services too low. I will cover this example in greater detail in a subsequent issue of this report. She took Jay's advice. She pointed out to her clients how much money she was saving them. She was then able to increase her fee from $700 a day to $3,000. But it took another consultant who had been trained by Jay to show her this strategy. She could advise others; she could not advise herself. She was underpricing her own services. This is common in the consulting field - - or just about any field in which people sell their ideas to businessmen. "Physician, heal thyself!"
The more experienced and richer the attendee, the more
he can gain from attending an Abraham seminar. The more
books and manuals by Jay that he has read before attending,
the bigger the pay-off.
THE CASE STUDIES
I have already mentioned "Incredible Case Studies." That collection of testimonials is filled with gold. Two of them are on-line. Volume 3 never was. [2007: Now Volume 2 is gone.] You can download them here:
Here, a newcomer can find out how real-world business owners have used Jay's techniques to solve problems and generate money. Here, old-timers can refresh their memories and get excited all over about the fundamental principles of consumer-driven marketing. I am one of these old-timers.
I began publishing my subscription-based newsletter, Remnant Review, in 1974. I still do. If I had known then what is in the Abraham case study manuals, I would have wasted far less money in dead-end marketing schemes. All of which is to say that I am not a wanna-be cheerleader from the sidelines of direct marketing. I know what I'm doing well enough to recognize the magnitude of what Jay Abraham has accomplished.
Not all of what he does can be taught. Some of it is intuitive, the product of a unique mind and unique mind- set. But you can learn enough of his approach to make you the 800-pound gorilla in your niche market. Well, maybe only a 500-pound gorilla. But that's a lot better than being content to remain a chimpanzee.
To give you an idea of the kind of material you will
find here, I'll survey briefly three of Jay's important
principles: risk-reversal, leveraging yourself, and the
open hand.
1. RISK-REVERSAL
Jay admits in the introduction to Volume 1 of the case studies that the most commonly used technique that are mentioned in the testimonials is risk-reversal.
Jay is not much for fancy language, but if he were to place this strategy under a heading, it would be this: "Overcoming Caveat Emptor." Caveat emptor -- "let the buyer beware" -- is a major restraining force on a potential customer's willingness to part with his money. The principle of caveat emptor is true, and it is well understood by the public.
In mail-order, it's vital for the seller to bear most or all of the risk of a transaction. When the buyer cannot see the seller face-to-face, or come into his store to demand satisfaction, he is doubly reluctant to buy. This is why "money-back guarantee" ranks only below "free" as the most powerful phrase in mail-order. The only question is whether the seller should add these words before the phrase: 30-day, 90-day, one-year, or lifetime.
Here is an odd but true fact: the longer the guarantee, the lower the rate of refund requests. There are a lot of unsubstantiated theories in the industry about this, but we all recognize the existence of the phenomenon.
Jay sees all sorts of ways for a business to reduce risk for buyers that sellers miss. When a business owner describes briefly the nature of his business, Jay instantly spots the missing hook: risk-reversal.
Jay is persuasive, which he has to be, because most
sellers resist the principle of risk-reversal. That's one
reason why I appreciate his case study manuals. It's clear
that a lot of his clients have understood the strategy, and
they have found that it works. Their businesses have
grown.
2. LEVERAGE YOURSELF
Everyone who learns how to make money by selling his time is at risk: sickness or injury, or the real killer, death. Also, he has too much business to take on any more. He can raise his fees, but he still in a wage-earner. He is, in the words of Thomas Stanley (The Millionaire Next Door), income rich but not balance-sheet rich. The correct goal is to become balance-sheet rich. But income- rich people don't have cheap spare time to become balance- sheet rich.
One way to leverage yourself is to help others start a business, and you retain a small piece of that business. For years, Jay has sought out businessmen and has taken a piece of the businesses in exchange for his advice. This is a good way to be compensated. But he faces the same old problem: every hour spent consulting fee-paying businessmen takes away from his income from non-fee consulting that will build up his balance sheet.
That's why I like Internet-based businesses. They can
make money 24 hours a day. Remember the phone company's
slogan? "Let your fingers do the walking!" I like this
one: "Let your computer do the selling!"
3. THE OPEN HAND
Jay says that you must become the pre-eminent provider of added value in your field. Go the extra mile. Leave something on the table for the other guy. Gain the well- deserved reputation of being someone who provides opportunities for his customers to think, "Let's do this again sometime . . . preferably soon."
Jay believes in the back end. Use the first sale to verify that you provide value. If necessary, spend 100% of your expected income from the first sale to establish a long-term relationship with a buyer. Then make another offer.
This is his application of the principle of the lifetime value of the customer. In other words, if you've got a good deal going, don't kill it by ceasing to make new offers.
To establish this good relationship, he says, be generous. Don't be grasping. Have an open hand. Don't worry about having passed up an opportunity to get a few percentage points more out of a transaction. The goal is to establish trust. Trust, he says, is such a valuable commodity that every seller should leave no stone unturned in providing reasons for being trusted by his buyers.
This is why his marketing strategy is consumer-driven. If you want to be number-one in your field, make your customers number-one in all of your operations.
If you believe this, accept this, and implement this, you've already found your diamond in the rough.
I have 115 more opportunities for you to find another
one. . . .
I suggest that you download his two manuals of case studies. You can read the full versions anytime one of my reports catches your fancy and you want more information.
Not all of the testimonials are equally useful. Once again, Pareto's 20/80 law comes close to hitting the mark. Of the 500 testimonials in all three volumes, I regarded 115 as worth commenting on. That's close enough to 20% to convince me that there is something to Pareto's law, although no one can say exactly why.
Jay Abraham's Case Studies are extremely valuable as stand-alone testimonials. I have done my best to follow his advice and add value to them. I have prepared a course on marketing based on 115 of these case studies. The course is available here: Marketing Case Studies.
So, if you want 115 highly motivational real-world examples of unconventional breakthrough marketing, mostly by small businessmen, you've come to the right site.
If you want a professional assessment on why each of these real-world marketing strategies worked -- from a man who has been using these and similar techniques since 1974 (me) -- you've come to the right site.
If you want 115 opportunities to perceive some new
angle, or re-confirm your trust in some unchangeable
marketing principle, or observe a creative application of
some unchangeable marketing principle, which you can then
"creatively emulate" in your own business, you're on the
right site.
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