Dan S. Kennedy's Blog, page 25

As a fan of Disney, I think one of the greatest services they offer is a VIP guided tour.

This allows you to do things such as skip to the front of the line, get led in through secret back doors, and basically do more in one day (and in great style) than most may ever imagine.

It’s a premium service so as you can imagine, there are people who say the price is exorbitant. These are the same people who complain about having to wait in long lines at Disney and only having time to go on 4 rides during the entire day.

Maybe if they considered that you can, for example, go on 12 rides in the time it takes others to go on one ride, they would see the value. Maybe they’d realize in the end, with a guide you can do in one day what it takes the average person multiple days, even a week, to do.

I see this in business all the time. People look for the easiest, fastest, or cheapest route without considering the whole picture.

Email marketing is a prime example.

Many businesses think, because it’s so inexpensive to use, they don’t need to put as much thought, time, or planning into it as they do with direct mail campaigns.

Then these same people complain about their poor open rates, declining click-throughs, and deflated results.

If you want better results, you have to consider the WHOLE picture. And you have to invest in making your emails better.

For instance, one disadvantage of email is that there is a lot more emails flooding your customers’ inboxes every day. Way more obviously than there are pieces of mail being delivered to their regular mail box.

That means a lot more competition for eyeballs.

So you don’t want to be sloppy about what you are sending.

Rather than firing off an email in ten minutes and blasting it out to your entire list without much thought or consideration, take the time to establish a plan with conversion goals so you know exactly what you want your audience to do before you ever write your email.

And make sure you’ve included the core elements needed in each email you send.

Consistency is also a factor. Whereas you can do a campaign in the mail at random times, once you start sending emails, you should deliver them consistently week in, week out without exception.

If you send email in a hit or miss, random fashion, and go missing from their inbox, people will forget about you in a heartbeat—even if you return to a regular, predictable schedule at a later date.

This doesn’t mean you can’t send emails at other times apart from your schedule. If you take care of the readers on your email list by sending valuable, relevant emails at regular intervals, they will pay attention at other times too.

There are many strategies you can combine with your email marketing to improve your results and increase your profits too—in many cases, well beyond the standard ROI you see quoted in studies.

In fact, rarely do I consult with a client where there aren’t untapped opportunities within their email strategy. Ways to combine email with other media to get higher response.

Strategies to use with their opt-ins that can separate the looky-loos from hyper-active buyers, increase their profits, improve click-throughs, or even create more loyal customers, clients, or patients.

Split test your subject lines, layout, email length, time sent, call to action, and so on and then examine your results to see what is working and what isn’t.

There is no free pass to the front of the line. If you want your emails to be the first thing your customers want to open, you have to invest in making them worthy.

On Friday, Dave Dee and I discussed everything you need to know about email marketing. For four hours, Dave grilled me about the strategies I’ve used to multiply my clients’ email marketing results.

We went through the core elements every email needs to have. And I revealed email marketing secrets I use to magnetically attract clients, customers, patients, and prospects—automatically. This was my first time talking specifically about email marketing—so there was a lot I’ve never revealed before.

If you’d like to watch that session, hear what I had to say, and get a copy of the swipe file and templates I shared, click here now for the details.

A few months ago, a business with a list well over a hundred thousand strong launched a campaign that was a total bust.

Their list is highly targeted. They did a lot of research and spent a good deal of time creating an avatar of their ideal client. Their demographic is one where there is disposable income waiting to be snatched up.

Their open rate and click-through rate was high.

The copy was good and on target with their list.

But no one on the list was buying.

So what happened?

The secret to creating certainty in any business is two things…

Consistent lead flow and the ability to turn those leads into paying customers.

In this case, they were able to not only attract targeted leads—but capture them.

But, it’s one thing to get leads.

It’s another thing all together to extract money from those leads.

Like most businesses, they filled up their sales funnel with “freebie-seekers” and “looky-loos” who have no intention of buying.

Furthermore, for more than a year they gave away free content, never once offering their own products for sale.

Sure, during that time, they included links in their blog to other people’s products and services, and a few other things to generate some income, but they never had a real call to action. They didn’t create real sales funnels or follow-up sequences. They never really even made a solid offer.

Then after a year, they decided they wanted to sell to their list, putting all their resources into one campaign.

They hired strategists, a research team, and copywriters with good track records. They made a plan and developed their strategy. Nothing was just thrown together. A lot of time, effort and money were put into this.

But people didn’t buy the product. In fact, they only made one sale.

They spent so much time giving away free content that they never taught their list how to be buyers.

So when they decided to flip the switch and ask for money, no one was listening.

If you want to avoid a similar problem in your business (or if you are making sales, but not as many as you think you should) create sales funnels to do the following:

Segment your database to discover who is interested in buying and who is more interested in collecting free stuff.
Pre-qualify people to segment the ones who are truly interested and qualify for the high-priced items or programs you offer.
Increase the value of a new member or purchaser by gently pushing them up the money pyramid.
Determine who your hyperactive buyers are.
Speed up the sales cycle and acquire customers faster.

If you want a TRUE “income at will” business, you need to have a sales funnel that not only helps you create a list of buyers, but one that lets you literally multiply every single dollar for every sale you make.

For business owners who want to weed out the looky-loos and maximize their profits from their list, I give more information about the sales funnels and profit multipliers that GKIC and I use in our business here. These are the profit multipliers we use to multiply our sales 4X, 5X, even 6X’s consistently.

Get access to these funnels NOW (Only available until Monday, January 26, 2015.)

Email marketing can be super profitable.

In fact, email marketing delivers the highest ROI of any digital marketing strategy. According to Mark the Marketer, on average for every $1 spent, there is a whopping $44.25 ROI – and sixty-six percent of consumers have made a purchase as a result of an email marketing message.

But you can also lose customers faster through email than any other form of media…

Because with email, the reader has all the power.

The reader decides whether or not to use the spam button to unsubscribe from your list.

The reader decides whether or not they will open your email, ignore it, or trash it.

And the reader can also decide to ignore your messages for the rest of eternity simply because you weren’t respectful of their time or they’ve labeled you as someone who continually sends them content that doesn’t interest them.

Fact is, on most email lists, almost half of subscribers are inactive.

So what can you do to change that (or ensure you aren’t causing it to happen)?

For starters, be respectful of your reader’s time and attention. Deliver value. Build your reputation for delivering information, products and services they feel they need.

Bottom line; take your email marketing seriously.

Here are 5 things you can do to get higher opens, click-through rates, and ROI:

1.) Write one-to-one: Email was designed as a personal one-to-one communication.

If you think about your own email inbox, you’ll probably agree that the emails from family and friends are the first to get attention and opened. So don’t send broadcast emails out that look like a sales flyer that would be thumbtacked to a board at Starbucks.

Address your reader and personalize.

 2.) Segment your list: Make your emails more relevant by segmenting your list.

For instance, let’s say you are holding a Google Hangout training on sales. The idea is you send an invite to your entire list, but then segment your list after the initial invite.

Only people who opt in for the Google Hangout will receive emails related to the training topic after that.

We’ll segment the list even further depending on the actions they take.

Plus, for future, we can send emails to the opted-in group about sales because they’ve shown interest in this topic.

This can significantly improve your open rate, even triple or quadruple it, because as Dan Kennedy frequently points out, “When your message is matched to a target audience that has a high level of interest in it, not only does your responsiveness go up but your readership goes up too.”

3.) Spend time on your subject lines: Sixty-four percent of people say they open an email based on the subject line, according to American marketing research firm, Chadwick Martin Bailey.

Create a swipe file for subject lines. Also, you can improve your open rate by using urgency and special offers.

Urgency can be created with limited time offers, alerts, and news bulletins. Special offers can include sales and discounts, but might also include using words such as free, new, or video.

While bizarre subject lines or curiosity can help your open rate, beware: These can also alienate readers if your email doesn’t deliver what is promised in your subject line.

4.) Mix it up: While your business depends on your readers doing something, don’t make every message about maximizing your revenues. Balance out asking for a sale with messages that include tips, a free download, discount, or something extra for them.

This shows appreciation, builds loyalty, interest, and attention from your readers over time. And in the end your subscribers will reward you.

5.) Send email messages regularly: Send emails consistently on a daily or weekly basis. Sending 4 messages a month verses one a month has been shown to improve open rates.

You might test using the words “Daily” or “Weekly” in the subject line as this has been shown to boost open rates. Stay away from using the word monthly as this has shown to hurt open rates and click-through rates.

Make 2015 the year you invest in making your email better. Engage with your active and past customers and prospects through consistent, relevant email messages. Give them more than they expect from you. When you do, you’ll be rewarded with higher open and click-through rates and a better ROI.

To help you get better results with your email marketing, I convinced Dan Kennedy to join me on Friday, January 30th at 11 AM Eastern Time to deliver a 100% FREE Four-Hour LIVE Training with step-by-step instructions on creating emails that absolutely deliver RESULTS.

Once you sign up, you’ll also be privy to my Micro-Training Video that shows you insider secrets you can use to instantly drive up your email results.

Don’t miss your chance to get FREE training with Dan Kennedy and take advantage of the stealth secrets I reveal in my Micro-Training Video. Register here NOW.

One of the things I talk about a lot is having systems in place so you can do the bulk of the work once. This saves you time, delivers predictable and proven results and prevents you from having to continually reinvent the wheel.

But it’s not just your marketing that needs systems in place.

When creating products, a product-creation system will help speed the process and ensure that you can consistently produce GREAT products that generate handsome profits to you and add to the long term solvency and value of your business.

So in looking at what should be in this system, if you ask business owners to list the most successful products they ever created, many will judge what goes on the list by choosing what sold the most units and earned the most money.

That’s not what I’d do though.

Over the years I’ve created hundreds of products, including multi-million dollar plus income earners.

But I’ve found that while making money is favorable, looking at the success of a product purely on the amount of money it generates is more of a short-term thinking approach.

I can list products I’ve created that haven’t necessarily made me a lot of money in terms of dollars directly earned from the sale of them, but due to other factors they have been indirectly responsible for a great deal of income long-term.

For example, my book the Ultimate Sales Letter. The sale of this book alone is not going to make me rich. But it’s done a lot for me and I would list it among the GREAT products I have created.

Magnetic Marketing is something that has been a best seller–and continues to be a best seller for me even 20+ years after creation. This has certainly been a great income generator, but it also has done much more over the long haul.

So when creating (or for that matter evaluating) a product, some things you’ll want to consider about the makeup of your product are:

1) Does it attract really good customers? You might have a great product but if it’s attracting the wrong clients, customers, or patients, how valuable is it to you in the long run? Create products that attract your ideal best customer.

2) Does it create lifetime customers? A lot of businesses ask themselves, “What can I do that is fast and cheap and makes me a lot of money quick?”

However, I’d suggest a better course is to create a product that is going to develop your relationship with your customer and set them on the path to become customers for life.

If you ask a lot of GKIC lifers how they came into the herd, you’ll find a lot of them say they read The Ultimate Sales Letter, The Ultimate Marketing Plan, or purchased Magnetic Marketing. In addition to delivering things that get REAL results for people, I use consumer psychology that develops my relationship with readers—which is what it takes to get people coming back for more.

3) Does it grow a loyal “herd” of repeat customers? When you focus on making products as easily and cheaply as possible, you jeopardize keeping customers.

Products that deliver a lot of value will help you grow a hyper-responsive list and loyal customers—THE most valuable asset in ANY business—online or offline.

So every product you develop, you want to put your best foot forward to avoid winding up with a diseased or inferior herd or low value herd and instead end up with a high quality herd that not only will buy from you again and again but that will refer you to others.

4) Does it provide an asset for your business? A product that has longevity and continues to sell for you year after year is a valuable asset. Not only does it provide you with consistent, reliable income (and even a consistent flow of quality leads for additional products or services), but it can help you sell your business for millions.

What’s the next step?

To learn more about the consumer psychology I use and how to create information products that become enduring million dollar assets and keep your customers coming back for more click here now.

“Find out all you can about your prospects before you call on them: their general living conditions, wealth, profession, hobbies, friends, and so on. Every hour spent in this kind of research will help you impress your prospect.” –David Ogilvy

On Thursday, I’ll be giving a free training on how to get deep into the mind of your prospect.  (Click Here Now For Full Details!)

Because getting to know your prospect is a critical part of your marketing.

In fact, I’d go so far to say that is the number one secret to writing a successful promotion.

When you know who you are selling to, you can create a specific marketing campaign that gets past your prospects natural resistance to selling. It allows you to match what you are selling to what they want.

You can increase sales and give your promotion an edge over competitors who don’t take the time to know and understand your prospect.

Plus you’ll be able to connect with your prospects and customers on a deeper level –which means not only will you be able to sell to them, you’ll be able to turn them into loyal customers in the long-run.

The tricky part is that when you are selling online or through direct mail you can’t see who you are talking to. You can’t see their age or gender or what car they are driving, like you would if you were selling to them face to face.

So what do you need to understand and look for? There are multiple layers to your prospect…

This covers things such as your prospects age, gender, income, and education. For instance, you might uncover that your ideal prospect is male, aged 40-50 years old, earns $100,000, and has a 4-year college degree.
This digs into where your prospects live such as the city, state, and country. This can be broken down even further to specific neighborhoods or types of areas, for instance rural vs. city.
Here’s where you dig into your target market’s attitudes, values, beliefs, and lifestyles. What they desire and what keeps them up at night. What their religious, political and other beliefs are and so forth.

Learn all you can about the people you are selling to. Find out what makes them tick. Because if you want people to buy your products and services, you have to know what makes them motivated and what will make them take action.

On Thursday’s blog, I’ll go into more detail on how you can easily find the demographics of your ideal prospect. Plus register here now for my free training, “Getting Deep Inside The Mind Of Your Ideal Prospect” which will show you how to track down and unmask what I call your prospect’s “Psychic-Graphics” which will really help you get to know your customer and is the key to what REALLY makes you money. This happens on Thursday, January 15, 2015 at 12pm ET. There is no charge to attend, but space is limited. Register here NOW so you don’t risk being locked out.

One of the fastest ways to increase your income is to offer high-priced services to a select number of people. (This is a strategy I detail in Moving Money Up the Pyramid). One of the possibilities for many is doing coaching (group or private) or consulting.  Here I’ll also explain seven other benefits to adding this revenue stream to your existing business.

1.) Keep your top customers or clients. As a coach or consultant people are paying you—often a good sum of money—to achieve a result. These are your best customers. They are the people who aspire to do more in life and are willing to invest in themselves to get there.

Whether it’s in the form of giving your clients ideas, providing motivation, a step-by-step blueprint, information, helping them draw out answers to get unstuck, etc. there are certain things your customers need to go further.

If you don’t provide them, they will look elsewhere. Which means you risk losing your best customers.

2.) Sell more of your products and services. Look around. People who are selling the most or have top-selling products and services, more often than not, offer some form of coaching or consulting.

People feel more comfortable buying from someone who is a coach. There is a built in perception of expertise that comes with the title.

Plus, it gives you one more platform to promote products, services, and events. This makes your business more profitable and fun.

3.) Attract more and better referrals. When people experience success, people notice. They want to know what their secret is. When you are the one providing the solution and the reason for their success, this leads to referrals. Plus, because the coaching client is your ideal target audience, when they refer people, more often than not, they refer good, quality clients.

4.) Tap into new markets. As a coach, you are exposed to new and different markets you might not otherwise be exposed to. This can open up entirely new profit centers for you.

Many of my business endeavors have come as a result of this. For example, I learned about and got into the Barber shop industry with Kennedy’s All American Barber Club™ which exposed me to clientele which tends to be affluent business owners and entrepreneurs. Also, being exposed to what is working in one industry and applying it to another. For instance, I’ve helped an industrial chemical company selling B2B create consumer versions of their products and succeed on home shopping television.

5.) Stay on top of your “A” Game. Your coaching and consulting clients are looking to you for answers, which keeps you searching for new, better, faster solutions and different ways to explain things so it finally clicks.

6.) Discover what will sell. The questions, challenges, and solutions that come from coaching and consulting sessions make great material for new information products that you can create and sell.

And because these problems come directly from your best customers, they are a good indicator of the problems your ideal customer is experiencing too. This can mean that you’ll attract more of your ideal target audience when you market these new products.

7.) Create a new source of income. Coaching and consulting is one of the most lucrative streams of income. This is because you only need a very small fraction of people to make it a major source of income.

If you sell products for $100 a pop vs. one person paying you $2,000 a month for coaching them 4 hours a month, which is going to take less of your time and help you reach your income goals faster?

Plus, for those customers who want more access to you, this is a way to give it to them. And you’ll be paid for your expertise instead of giving it away for free turning your hard work and expertise into a source of income.

If you want to work less while making significantly more AND you want to grow your business, build your celebrity, offer more value to your customers, and reach your goals faster…then coaching and consulting is one of the best strategies I know.

Click here now if you want my ultimate consulting and coaching system in a box with ALL the materials you’ll need (including contract and marketing examples) to either augment your existing business or start a new one. Plus, as a special bonus, you’ll hear from Dr. Tom Orent on how to design, market and sell high-ticket coaching and Frank Kern, who makes $175,000 a MONTH consulting clients will tell you his secrets to creating, pitching, and closing high-priced exclusive products like consulting and coaching.

You’ll need to hurry though, this offer is only good for the next three days.

As the year was ending, I shared two tools you can use to make 2015 your best ever, including a free training I did and Robert Skrob’s step-by-step blueprint for planning your year in just half a day.  Tomorrow we’ll announce a new training series from one of the smartest marketers and all around businessmen I know…Eben Pagan.  (To get a sneak peek click here)

Today, I’d like to give you 6 ways to help you meet your 2015 goals that will support the economic predictions for 2015.

Get focused on your target market. A lot of businesses waste a ton of money on advertising because they haven’t spent enough time choosing the right market for their product and services. Get clear about who your audience is. Once you do this, you’ll cut your waste to zero and start getting maximum results from all your marketing.


Fine tune your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). If you are still competing with other businesses, then your USP needs work. Create a USP that makes your business the clear and only choice for your customers. Sell packages. When you take a bunch of things you are already selling and create a package with a compelling price, you can often make a lot more money.


Offer more ‘done for you’ products. People are getting lazier and lazier—which means “done for you” offers are increasingly more appealing. And they are willing to pay just to get it done. What ‘done for you’ package(s) can you offer your customers?


Sell to groups. Earlier this year, we talked about the idea of selling to groups from the stage, through tele-seminars, webinars, and so on, instead of one to one. When you get good at selling to groups you can make significantly more per hour.


Get better at email marketing. There continues to be more and more competition for attention in your email in-box. Too many business owners are sloppy and don’t give enough care to creating good, relevant, compelling messages—consistently.

Learn the fundamentals of crafting a compelling message and resist the temptation to just whip something up and get it out. Poor email messages will alienate your list—sometimes permanently. While a consistent compelling message will get them opening, clicking, and buying.

Round up your lost customers. You might be surprised how many of your customers have “gone missing”. They will be happy you remember them and many will be eager to come back. This is an immediate solution to bring an instant flow of cash into your business.

Doing one of these things will increase your income. Doing all of them could make a tremendous impact. Pick one or two to start and once you’ve implemented them, move on to another one (or two) on the list.

And if you really want to get a jump start on 2015, come to Fast Implementation Bootcamp. A 2-Day Event –FREE to GKIC Members will help you quickly and easily implement GKIC marketing tactics such as the ones I’ve covered in today’s message for FAST Growth.

This is for you whether you’re new to marketing your business or if you’ve been a student of marketing for some time. Discover the little hinges that swing BIG doors wide open in your business and find the hidden profits in your business in 2015.

Register for our next Bootcamp and get two days of workshops from yours truly and Mike “The Jewel” Stodola and you’ll discover 8 steps to increase your business by 25% in just 48 hours.  Click here now to join us…space is limited.

“A single thought can revolutionize your life as it did mine. A single thought can make you rich or it can land you in prison for the rest of your life.”—Earl Nightingale, Personal Development Pioneer, Motivational Speaker and Author

When I heard Earl make this statement, a light bulb went off for me.

What I got from it was that you do not necessarily need either genius or persistence to enjoy a few prosperous years.

Nor must you labor for decades.

The recognition of an exceptionally valuable thought knows no age or time or educational barriers or limitations.

My friend Paul Hartunian made a small fortune thanks to a single thought that occurred while watching a news broadcast about repairs being made to the famous Brooklyn Bridge; that people would pay for parts of the old bridge scrap as collectibles.

That he could be the first guy to honestly “sell the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Napoleon Hill tells the story of the man who revolutionized the grocery industry with the thought of “self-service.”

Ray Kroc looked at the McDonald brothers’ thriving hamburger stand and thought, “duplicable.”

I could list thousands of similar examples.

There is also the ability to identify opportunity in a given set of circumstances where most others are unable to spot it.

While the trend has slowed down a bit, consider development companies going into decrepit industrial areas and converting warehouses and abandoned docks into entertainment areas full of restaurants, nightclubs, shopping and offices.

At an arts and crafts show, I stumbled across a guy doing a pretty brisk business selling planters made out of old, worn out cowboy boots he’d rehabbed and decorated –as I recall at about $100 a hit.

There are “formulas,” by the way, that can help you spot these ideas and stir these creative thoughts.

Three things you need to do to “think on demand” so that you can automatically generate money-making ideas that could revolutionize your life are…

Make time to think. One of the great problems of the busy, ambitious entrepreneur is stopping to think.

And many don’t.

But just about every successful business leader I know finds one way or another to “steal” time just to think.

Thomas Edison said, “To do much clear thinking a man must arrange for regular periods of solitude when he can concentrate and indulge his imagination without distraction.”

I knew one successful entrepreneur who regularly went for long, meandering drives in rural areas.

Another built a shack about 15 miles from his office, with no phone, no FAX, a comfortable chair, a view of a river and would go there two afternoons a week just to, as Edison put it, “sit for ideas.”

I find eating lunch alone works for me.

But making time to stop and think is just one side of the equation.

Use organized thinking. Most people approach things very randomly. Most people approach every event that occurs in their business, every evolving trend, every sudden occurrence this way.

You’re presented with a problem, whatever it is. An employee goes to work for your competitor and takes half of your customers with them. You’ve lost half your customers which present a problem.

The tendency is to respond to this through random thought. You wonder around, maybe throwing and kicking things in this example, dealing with whatever thought comes into your head about how you might react to it.

But there isn’t an organized process to sit down with ourselves and say, “Okay, let’s go down the list here and see what applies to this situation and what might trigger a good solution.”

Explore all facets of an idea. Far too often, people get shut off in meetings and conversations by being called “negative” and told: “don’t be negative” or “don’t over-analyze”.

Michael Vance, who spent many years in charge of idea and people development for Walt Disney and co-founded the Creative Thinking Association of America, says it perfectly when he said:

“There is a difference between the Negative Ned who always instantly resists any change or new idea versus the thoughtful, rational person who wants to explore all facets of an idea, from best possible outcome to worst possible outcome.”

Creative thinking is only one way to look at an idea. There are a multitude of different ways to think about a problem, event, occurrence, or trend and if you are going to focus on creative thinking as your ONLY approach then you are probably going to lose on everything you do and have monstrous problems too.

Generate ideas, stir creative thoughts, solve problems quickly, and come up with money-making ideas consistently when you follow these rules for thinking on demand.

And when you want to discover more about the methodical, duplicable, repeatable system I use for myself and my clients for coming up with solutions and money-making ideas for products, ads, sales letters, websites, revamping or reinventing your business, solutions to problems then continue reading about it here.

Plus through Midnight on Monday, January 5, 2015, I am making two exclusive reports available for free that will help you decipher when it’s better to keep your “old stuff” rather than come up with a new idea and 10 Big Breakthroughs in Business Life, that when you use them will multiply your income by at least 10 times. You can find out about these free reports here.

Here are two tools to help you make 2015 your best year ever.

The first one is a training I did on realistic, practical and workable goal setting.  I talked about why much of what you’ve probably been taught about traditional goal setting could actually be demotivating and holding you back.  Then I shared what I’ve learned about the psychology of goals and how to really stay motivated, and achieve them.

You can get this free training by clicking here.  I hope you like it because it meant a lot to me to share these ideas with you!

Secondly below you’ll find a post from Robert Skrob, of the Information Marketing Association, where he outlines how in just half a day, you can plan out much of your 2015 business calendar.  Enjoy.

The constant struggle to produce marketing campaigns and to fulfill the promises you have made to customers makes it difficult to spend much time planning. But the only true shortcut to success is planning.

Once you have completed your planning, you’ll be better able to stay on task, monitor your results and implement new ideas that may come up during the year. Without a planning calendar, it’s easy to get distracted by a great new idea or a sudden emergency and forget about your real priorities.

Planning doesn’t have to be a long, ugly process. Instead, here is a four-hour planning success template. Use a wall calendar so it’s easy to see the entire year at a glance. In one afternoon, you can create your operations plan for 2015. Set aside just four hours to work through this easy step-by-step process, and you’ll have the shortcut to success for 2015.

1:00 – 1:30 p.m.

A Candid Review of 2014

One of the most important parts of planning for 2015 is to reflect on the year that has just passed. Open your 2014 calendar and review your activities for the year. Take a look at each month for two minutes or so. Write down a couple of successful activities from each month that you want to repeat in 2015. Also consider the activities that generated disappointing results so you can avoid them in 2015.

1:30 – 2:00 p.m.

Create Your Business Targets

Before you can plot out your year, you have to give careful consideration to where you want to be when the year ends.

Determine your revenue and customer acquisition goals for the year. How many sales do you want to make to new customers? If you have multiple products, write down the anticipated sales for each one. Also, how much money do you want to make this year? Chances are, most of that has to come from profit on backend sales to existing customers. Better to know your earnings goals in advance so you can plan activities during the year to generate that revenue.

These are all difficult questions to answer; do the best you can and feel free to revise the numbers as you go.

You’ve worked for an hour, and your calendar is still blank. Twenty-five percent of your time is up, and you have “nothing” to show for your effort. While it may look like you haven’t accomplished anything, setting your goals now will make 2015 a lot more successful. Although you haven’t yet planned a single event or activity, you’ll be better off for the time you have spent reviewing the past year and creating your business targets.

2:00 – 2:20 p.m.

Customer Acquisition

As you run your company, it’s easy to become focused on the operational deadlines. It’s rare for a prospective customer to call to complain that you haven’t sent him or her any marketing this month. Since people who aren’t customers aren’t in your face complaining, it’s easy to forget about them. But they are the most important. No matter how loyal your customers are today, eventually they won’t be your customers. It is critical to add new customers every month so you can maintain and increase your business.

In the last planning step, you listed your customer acquisition goals for each of your programs. Now you need to outline the marketing work for the year to generate those members. For each month, map out customer acquisition offers, events and marketing campaigns. The key is to make sure you continue your customer acquisition efforts throughout the entire year.

2:30 – 3:00 p.m.

Sales to Existing Customers

As your business grows, you’ll discover customer acquisition increases in cost. Perhaps this year if you spent $36,800.00 on a marketing campaign, you could get 420 new customers. In 2015, you may discover that same $36,800.00 delivers only 303 new customers. These increasing costs require you to focus a lot of attention on selling additional products and services to your existing members.

Plan activities that will generate additional revenue from your existing customers. Use the number you determined as your annual profit target to map out the necessary backend programs to achieve your goal.

3:00 – 3:20 p.m.

Fulfillment/Customer Relationships

Once you acquire a customer, the most important thing you can do is to keep your promises. If your marketing told the customer you would deliver a product that would solve a particular problem, you better deliver that product. Providing high-quality products helps you retain customers longer, makes them want to buy more and encourages them to upgrade to higher-level coaching programs.

Map out the activities you need to do to deliver on your promises. Outline any ongoing deadlines. Also include time for product revisions.

3:20 – 3:40 p.m.

Administrative Improvements

Take a few minutes to note any administrative improvements you want to make during the year. Planning for them makes it easier to execute your marketing because your momentum won’t be interrupted by emergencies that could have been avoided.

Do you need to add people to your team? Do you have a dashboard to monitor your business? Are your employment policies up-to-date? Do you need to create some educational materials for your team members so they have a better understanding of your goals and activities to help them do their jobs? Do you have scripts to handle in-bound customer calls? Do problem vendors need to be replaced? Do you need to set up an investment program to maximize cash you receive from your business?

These activities need to be planned out for the year to make sure you allocate time to complete them. There is no sense worrying about them or feeling guilty because you don’t get them all done. Plan some time each month during the year to get a few of these items completed. By the end of the year, you’ll be a lot better off than if you had tried to fit them in as you went along.

3:40 – 4:00 p.m.

Add Date Commitments

Jot down any conferences or seminars you would like to attend in 2015. Look for conferences within your niche that you should attend. Plus, this is a good time to note events you’ve wanted to attend but haven’t found time for in the past.

4:00 – 4:30 p.m.

Big Picture Planning

Take a quick look at that list of 2013’s successes and disappointments you created in the first phase of your planning. Are there any successes from 2013 that need to be included in your calendar for 2015? Are there any disappointments from 2013 repeated on your 2015 calendar that need to be removed?

Also, look at the work distribution. Did you load up too much work in any given month? Are travel commitments reasonable to maintain your workload? Are there ways to redistribute activities to make projects easier?

Look at the year. Are there ways to move activities around for efficiencies and to make sure you don’t create impossible deadlines for yourself?

4:30 – 5:00 p.m.

Update Your Personal Calendar

Open your personal calendar and put all of the dates and work you mapped out on the wall into your personal calendar. If you are running your info-business in addition to a job or another business you operate, plan around the work you have to do for that company.

But go through and set aside appointments with yourself to make sure you have the appropriate time to execute your business needs. Save some time for other activities that may pop up as you go along. Something always comes up unexpectedly, so give yourself several hours of flexibility per week at this stage of your planning.

Shortcut to Success in 2015

While it’s good to have your planning calendar up where you can see it, you may not want it on your wall all year long. If not, set aside an hour or two each month to pull out your calendar and see if you are on track with the shortcut you laid out at the beginning of the year.

If you discover you are behind on a couple of activities, it’s a lot easier to get caught up if only a month or two have gone by. If you remember four months later that you were supposed to do something to generate an activity or revenue, chances are you’ve lost that opportunity for the year.

***URGENT NOTE***Speaking of how to make 2015 your best year ever…another thing successful, profitable business people do is attend events.

When you read stories about GKIC Elite—the ones who are making their business and life dreams come true—I can guarantee you they’ve attended a conference (or two or seven…).

If you REALLY want to make 2015 your best year, then you will add this money-making event to your plan.

For more information or to register NOW to take advantage of the BEST AVAILABLE PRICE Before it expires click here.

There they are. Business owners, marketers, and salespeople huffing, puffing, straining and struggling to convey their marketing message…

…to convince a prospect of the virtues of their product or service, while an entire army of more persuasive, more instantly believable salespeople eager to do the heavy lifting for them are willing to do it for free.

But they keep these people locked away and out of sight.

How dumb is that?

Who are these slam-dunk salespeople that can improve your results ten-fold and are willing to do the work for you at no charge?

Your customers. Your clients. Your patients.

If you fail to put a system in place that utilizes the emotional connection that your customers, clients or patients can provide to link your company, product, service and deliverables to your prospects’ feelings, then you are not only working ten times harder, but you are losing customers and money every single day.

Plus referrals are the best type of customers you can get. They spend more both in the short and long run and are more loyal than the normal customer.

This has not only been my experience (and my clients’ experience) but has also been confirmed in studies, such as the one Darcy Juarez mentions in her article Is Your Business Leaking Profits?

When I lived in Phoenix, I bought cars from a top Ford salesman who knew the value of utilizing his customers’ emotions.

The walls of his cubicle were filled with photographs—each showing a customer or a customer with their family, smiling, standing next to their new Ford. Each photo is dated and has the customer’s name on it.

He was not only my car salesman the entire ten years I lived there, but through referrals, he was my family’s and friends’ car salesman.

My photo was there with my Lincoln. My brother’s photo was there with his pickup truck. My father’s photo was there with his Mercury Marquis. And so on.

Some families have many more photos there from the series of vehicles they purchased over the years.

It doesn’t take long to accept the pictures as proof that this guy treats his customers right—otherwise, how could he have so many photos of them?

Incidentally, when I went to buy a Ford from another dealership in another state, I walked in and paid cash for a $35,000 SUV.

I was never shown any testimonials. Never asked for one. And never asked for a referral either.

The next year, in that state, I bought two cars, neither from the $35,000 SUV salesman.

Using “photo proof” is one thing that will work in any business to show happy customers with their newly purchased merchandise or after their newly performed service.  

A restaurant can have a special menu item—an outrageous sized burger, ice cream sundae, etc. (at an inflated price I might add) and post a picture of customers with it on their wall.

An orthodontist can show patients after they get their braces off.

A florist can photograph happy surprised recipients of delivered flowers.

In my literature I often include photos of myself with famous people, actors and actresses I’ve worked with in infomercials, athletes, coaches, even former U.S. Presidents I’ve appeared on seminar programs with.

Using picture proof as part of your referral system not only can convert prospects to clients, customers, or patients, with less resistance and less fee resistance, but it can result in and be a part of your referral system to get clients being brought to you.

Not just told about you. Not just referred to you. Brought to you.

For example, in the restaurant example above, those who order the monster-sized dessert, hamburger, etc. will not only tell their friends about this experience; they will drag their friends along to the restaurant just so they can show them their picture on the wall.

Simply put, customers can and will say things that you can’t; “You’ve got to see my chiropractor, he’s a genius at getting rid of back pain.”

Or because your customers can make an emotional connection much, much faster and easier; “I’ve been going to his events for 10 years. I never miss one –they make me on average $80,000 to $100,000 extra every year.”

What others say about you and your product, service, or business is at least 1,000 times more convincing than what you say, even if you are 2,000 times more eloquent.

So let your customers help you. And help them do it more often by putting a referral system in place.

By the way, if you want even more ways to quickly multiply your customer base with people predisposed to do business with you…

Or if you’ve ever been afraid to ask for referrals, don’t know how (or your customers don’t know how), or you want a constant stream of referrals bringing business to you then this message from me will give you the answers for which you’ve been searching.

Discover how you can create a referral system at little or no cost that generates an endless flow of your ideal customers, clients, and patients who are already predisposed to do business with you here.