Jay Abraham - Internet Stratagies - 7 of 7 [PDF]

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

Special Report #7 ¾ Back End Report ¾ Bump and Upsell ¾ Use Risk Reversal

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

Create a Profitable and Systematic Back-End Most online companies never address the back-end or residual part of their internet businesses. But the back-end is all- important. In other writings I have discussed how one of my clients offered to sell a collection of rare coins to his new customers for just $19. He actually lost a few dollars up-front on every sale. "Up-front" is the key, because of the 50,000 people who bought a coin set at $19, nearly 10,000 came back and bought on the back-end for $1,000 or more. Therefore my client made $2,000,000.00 on the back-end. But that's just the first step. Once every three months this client goes back to the original 50,000 people who bought the $19 coin sets and gets at least 250 people to buy at least $1,000 more in coins. That translates into $50,000 in back-end profits every three months, above and beyond the $2,000,000 I've already told you about. My client then goes back to those 10,000 people who bought something for $1,000 and gets about 1,500 of them to buy more within the first nine months. The average additional order is $5,000, which makes my client another $1,500,000. And those 1,500 customers keep ordering an average of one-and-a-half times a year. That means an additional $1,500,000 in business every year comes from the back-end.

The back-end is vital to any business. Look at the above illustration. If my client had only made that first $19 sale and not cultivated the back-end, he'd have missed out on many, many millions of dollars in business, and actually lost money on the customer. Until and unless you can identify how much back-end business you can expect, you won't know how profitable or unprofitable an ad, sale, customer or promotion really is. For example, if you run $10,000/ month in pay-per-click ads (Google, Overture, etc), and they produce $9,000 in retail sales, it looks like you are losing $1,000 or more (I'm not figuring the cost of the product sold or services furnished).

But are you losing in the long run? If you induce those new customers to purchase a similar product or service from you within 45 days, you double the value of the customer, and all of a sudden you're far into profit instead of loss. Induce them to come back once every three months and repeat the average transaction, and you've set up an annuity, all from an original $1,000 loss, which you subsidized. But within three months or less the back-end business should offset your subsidy several times over. The same dynamics apply to any website. If a site costs you $2,000 a month in development costs, hosting, promotion, ongoing maintenance, and all it sells each month is $2,000 in new business, it sounds bad.

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet Yet, if the new customers do repeat business, or, if you develop a back-end that converts normally one- shot sales into repeat customers, you accrue fabulous future income even if your site loses you money at first. If every month you bring on 20 customers who initially spend $100, and you get them to spend $100 every three months, soon you'll have 600 people spending $100 every three months. That's $60,000. Another part of back-end dynamics is harvesting the "residual value" of a customer. This takes a lot of thought, experimentation, and carefully documented analysis. Look for logical product or service extensions to offer your customers. Experiment with website offers "locking clients into" an ongoing purchasing commitment, for example with subscriptions to “members only” exclusive areas to your websites. Experiment with capturing opt-in email addresses and emailing them a specific offer, or making a specific offer by phone and measuring the response. If you are basically a one-product or one-service company, seek out other products, companies or services to offer your customers as your back-end. You can do this through affiliate programs, or joint venture offers of related, non competing products. Be open minded about other products, services and companies that might fit, based on either demographics or areas of interest.

Religiously, create, test, refine, and expand your back-end over and over again.

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

Create a Profitable and Systematic Back-End Action Steps If you have not already done so, please immediately click on: http://www.abrahaminternetstrategies.com/register.htm Register for my event! Your internet business will be positively transformed by the information, inspiration, and specific action steps we will deliver to you. List the methods you actively use to acquire email addresses (and other demographic information). What do you currently do (if anything) with this information? _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

List the 3 best new product or service ideas for “back end offers” you can begin offering to your lists. 1 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 2 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 3 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ List the 3 best “joint venture” or affiliate program products and services you can start offering to your clients. 1 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

2 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 3 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ Create a “wish list” of the 3 most wildly profitable, “out of the box” potential internet ideas that may create a total breakthrough in your internet marketing. 1 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 2 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 3 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

Bump and Upsell I almost laugh at this technique. It's so easy, effective and a veritable "no-brainer," that it's amazing so few websites employ it. If you offer every customer you sell a better or added deal right at the point of sale – like a larger quantity at an advantageous price...or a package of items or services in addition to the one the customer is buying - 30% to 40% of the customers you offer it to will say "yes." This simple little technique could immediately "double" your profit and quadruples your cash flow effortlessly.

Yet few websites utilize it Almost no websites constantly and systematically offer upsells. And yet, it's probably the easiest, most predictably effective way to increase the size and profit of a sale. Upselling can be used by virtually any kind of business. As a point of (off-line) reference, think of an car purchase your have made. Car dealers are masters at upselling. After they've sold you the car, they add on all kinds of options, plus insurance, financing and permanent acrylic wax coating. This normally adds $500 to $1,000 in additional profit to the dealer's bottom line, because they're all services that the dealer - not the factory - provides and profits from. Shopping carts can easily be programmed and have copy written to upsell by offering everyone a better deal, or a larger quantity, Any business can upsell, as long as the add-on is a legitimate value, with definite appeal and high perceived value, and as long as the offer is alluring, you can apply the add-on/upsell technique to any business, and any legitimate web based sales offer.

One thing is terribly important, though: Be certain you develop a compelling, believable reason why you are offering the add-on or upsell so the offer has credibility. How much can the add-on or upsell technique add to your bottom line? That depends. For a car dealer, the add-on could equal or exceed the profit from the sale of the car. It can double the dealer's profit. For an online retailer, if every time someone buys $50 worth of merchandise, you offer them the chance to buy $50 worth of something else for $35 (of which $15 is profit), and you upsell one out of three people, you've added an average of $5 in net profit to every $50 sale you'd normally make ($15 in profit divided by three). With a wholesale distributor, if someone buys $1,000 of X product and you offer them the chance to buy $500 of Y product for only $375, you might only make a profit of $75 more. But if one out of every five customers takes you up on the offer, you've just added an average of $15 more profit to every sale.

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

The dynamics of the add-on concept can work anywhere You can make the add-on or upsell much bigger than the original purchase, too. For example, say you have an online “link checking” service where you offer to make a report for website owners of broken and outdated links on their site.. Someone emails you to check their simple 3 page website site. You charge more for larger sites. Let's say the normal service fee is $100. But, instead of taking the $100, after doing the job (and before getting the check from the customer), you have your link checker offer the customer an annual (four- time minimum) service contract (which regularly goes for $400), for just $250 if they pay now. And offer to apply the $100 they already owe you to the $250. As many as two out of three people offered this bump or upsell will accept - remember, they've just had a problem, otherwise they wouldn't have you out there right now. And, since most webmasters only call again when the problem gets really bad (or never!) , by "locking" the customer into an annual commitment, you get them "habitualized" to the idea of a (and to the prospect of being billed every year for $250).

What's all that worth to you? A lot, see for yourself. Let's say that before upselling, 100 sites paid you $10,000, and maybe a few would call you back in a year or so for another $100 "one-shot" call. After upselling, 30 websites (one out of three) pay you $100 ($3,000), while 70 pay you $250 ($17,500). So the same 100 sites are worth $20,500 to you immediately, instead of $10,OOO -a two-fold increase.

Plus, at least half will pay the $250 every year Conservatively estimating, that's worth $8,750 a year ...for years. lfyou did this on every call, you could not only instantly increase your business by several times, but also lock up tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in dependable profits for next year, the year after, and forever. The same basic strategy can be used by virtually any kind of business... A web copywriter can offer every customer a free quarterly sales copy consultation, (to improve their sales conversion rates) worth $365 - with any agreement of $500 or more in your services. Have the consultation take place when you check their site, email your copywriting analysis, and phone the client. It guarantees two things: 1. A higher-than-normal average sale (most people will spend the extra dollars to get the valuable bonus); 2. You're "locking. in" the customer to a commitment to receive your analysis four more times (minimum) over the next 12 months, with a mental predisposition towards improving their websites conversion rates. It gives you an additional four opportunities to sell them something. Apply the basic concept of annualizing or quarterly review consulting to virtually any business. Let your imagination run wild. It will lock in customers for life. Also, it will instantly increase your average sale.

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet Bumping and upselling can be extremely profitable for your internet business, but it it's absolutely vital to think very carefully about the products you are going to offer for a bump. Make sure that product or service is valuable, timely, and needed. Otherwise, you may run the risk of your customers feeling slighted (believing that you are offering something to reduce inventory). Upselling is one of the most neglected yet predictably effective techniques you can use to instantly improve the average value of every sales transaction. Experiment! The results of bump and upsell will amaze you.

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

Bump and Upsell Action Steps If you have not already done so, please immediately click on: http://www.abrahaminternetstrategies.com/register.htm Register for my event! Your internet business will be positively transformed by the information, inspiration, and specific action steps we will deliver to you. Determine what compelling upsell offers you could make. List the top 3 here. Consider greater quantity, more frequency, higher quality, complimentary additions, service contracts, additional services, “bundles” of products, “bundles of services…… 1 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 2 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 3 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ If you are currently offering some bumps and upsells, write here how they could be improved, enhanced, and enlarged. ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

Determine 3 appealing “continuation” offers that will boost your average sale and “lock in” your clients to ongoing purchases on a regular basis. 1 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 2 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 3 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ If you are currently offering “continuation” offers, write here how they could be improved, enhanced, and enlarged. _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

Risk Reversal In Action Consumers are hesitant towards purchasing any product or service (especially major purchases on the internet) - and people don't want to make the wrong decisions. If you can overcome that hesitation to take action by offering to guarantee their purchase and reverse the risk of buying you'll get a lot more business. That's a given! Think of it this way... If a customer comes back to you with a problem, a complaint, or a change of mind, you'd probably give him back his money anyway, right? But few companies have the willingness to make the guarantee of risk reversal a strong part of their sales proposition. I say "risk reversal" because most of my clients never realize that whenever a sales proposition is extended to a prospective customer, someone has to take the risk; either the seller or the buyer.

Far too often, companies make the buyer bear the risk. That's a big mistake. By turning the tables and taking all the risk off the buyer and assuming it yourself, your sales proposition is so much more powerful, appealing, and embraceable that considerably more customers will break out of their paralysis and take advantage of ~ offer since there's no risk on their part to do so. In my office and home in California, and in my publisher’s offices in Maryland, there are stacks of testimonial letters I have received over the years from consulting clients, or from people who have participated in one of my many marketing seminars - or purchased my books. Many of those letters were written by people who wanted to tell me about their successful use of risk reversal. Here are a few quick, condensed examples: o

A bottler of spring water assured any retail store that bought one case of his product, and was “unsatisfied in any way,” that it could return any unsold product after 90 days and get a full refund. Result: “Untold numbers of new retail accounts.”

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A professional in the field of environmental medicine took my advice and started using risk reversal. He later wrote to me: “We are the only company that offers a full 30-day unconditional guarantee of our product … this single suggestion has been a critical factor in the decision to purchase in over 75% of our sales.”

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A man who sells title insurance told me how “thrilled” he was after reading some of my marketing texts. He also said that by using my techniques, including risk reversal (“I have the only money-back guarantee in the title insurance closing business”), his previously troubled business had its best year in 22 years.

Some business people I’ve known have adopted risk-reversal policies that don’t go far enough to truly attract and benefit and advantage their customers. I call that half-hearted risk reversal or reversing the risk with your fingers crossed. In a few cases, it’s even worse - it’s a grotesque form of self-delusion: If you give the customer a tiny little advantage, and then talk yourself into thinking that you have given them something that is immensely generous and of great and overarching value, you’re only fooling yourself!

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet I urge you not to fall into that trap. Don’t load up a risk-reversal offer with a lot of qualifiers and conditions and fine print. If you do that, your customers, clients or patients will quickly see through the offer you’re making and react negatively, instead of positively. Customers like to think that they can’t go wrong taking a risk-reversed offer. They don’t want to read a “risk free” headline that is followed by fine print stating “risk-free every day except Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.” Customers want Friday, too. They don’t want to read fine print that tells them that, to get a refund, they’ll have to go through some contorting, complicated, legalistic procedure. So, again, my recommendation: Reverse the risk! But do it straightforwardly and to the absolute limit that you can go - so that your customers will clearly see the benefit and goodwill in what you are doing. Many more business and professional people should be making the guarantee of risk reversal an integral, powerful part of their sales offer - just as the people I told you about (above) are doing. But risk reversal, especially total risk reversal, is still a struggling concept. It’s not in wide use. That’s sad, because if we believe in what we’re selling we shouldn’t hesitate to take all risk off our customers’ shoulders and put it on our own. How often have you seen the very prominent (I mean prominent) display of a “Your Money Back With No Questions Asked” sign in a retail store or restaurant? Could you quickly cite an advertisement that you’ve read in a magazine or newspaper recently that highlighted a full-refund policy? Don’t be afraid to reverse the risk. Your customers will respect you for doing that - and your business will flourish. I have used the concept in my own seminar business and I can tell you from that firsthand experience that it is a winner.

Some Sample Copy Here's some sample copy to get you going. I wrote this as part of a promotion for a client.

Your Bullet-Proof Protection... If, by the 90th day of training on Power Burst principles, you haven't nearly doubled your strength and improved your size and/or muscle definition a bare-bones minimum of 20% or better, I want you to write and tell me and I'll gladly refund your entire purchase price on the spot - no questions asked. On the other hand, if my Power Burst Training method produces incredible results for you, I want you to not only write and tell me about it - but tell your friends too! Even if you do decide to stop the program or send for a refund, I want you to keep the $500 weight training video program for your faith in me now. - Leo Costa Personal Weight Trainer ***

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet Here is the most liberal guarantee I've ever written (or seen): Jay Abraham's Totally Risk-Free 100% Money-Back Double Guarantee... Purchase as many sets of transcripts as you like. Read them over thoroughly (perhaps several times each). Then, take the ideas you get from them and immediately put them into action. If you discover that the ideas you use don't payoff, you can get a refund of every penny you paid up to nine months after you order your transcripts! That's right, TAKE NINE MONTHS TO DECIDE IF THEY'RE ANY GOOD OR NOT! Or, if you read Jay's consultation transcripts and you feel right away that the information isn't useful or appropriate for your situation - and you honestly can't use any of the ideas you get from it - Jay will refund your entire purchase price on the spot. No questions asked. No hard feelings, either. And here's the best part: Even if you do decide to ask for a refund, Jay will send you Gary Halbert's Advertising Brainstorming Transcript (valued at $2,500) absolutely FREE. Why such a generous guarantee? It's Jay's way of assuring you that - in the remote possibility that your business is so unique or difficult that not even his principles can help you - you won't have to pay for something you can't use. Jay is purely "performance based," and if you honestly can't benefit from what he teaches or advises, he doesn't want your money. It's that simple. However, you'll never know until you try. That's why he's giving you nine months to validate his concepts - beyond any question - not that they merely can help you make money, but that they do help you make money. If they don't, you're not out a dime. Instead, you get a $2,500 bonus just for your trouble! He can't possibly be any fairer. *** Before you get scared about reversing the risk to your customers, let me tell you this irrefutable fact. When a company reverses the risk and assumes the risk for the customer … double or triple sales increases are often the result. Yes, a few customers will take advantage of your guarantee. But, as a rule, so many more people will buy from this strategy of reversing the risk, that the refund levels are virtually unimportant. Even if you do get refund requests, it's easy to turn those requests and complaints into compound profits. Here's just one example (one I've used several times very successfully) of how you can actually create a new profit center around your customer requests...

Creating A New Profit Center Through an inexplicable maneuver (and though I usually demand that my clients' products and services are absolutely top-quality and well-respected), I once took on a "quick-fix" consulting client whose product was of incredibly poor quality. In fact, he was getting almost more returns and refund requests than he was making in sales. He was really in trouble.

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet I decided to craft a very nice letter that apologized so unreservedly for the poor quality of the product that customers couldn't help but be impressed at our sincerity. But what made this letter really successful was that we offered to make up to the customer for the ill will they felt toward us by giving them incredible savings on similar and kindred products from sources we had negotiated incredible wholesale prices from. We invited the customer to simply telephone us and tell us what product they had selected, we would have it shipped -out immediately and adjust their account accordingly - refunding the difference or billing their charge card the slight additional amount. The customers loved us. They got rid of the terrible purchase they had made and they got to purchase the top-quality products they really wanted. Everybody (including my client) won something out of the deal. Of course, if the customer was dead-set on getting a complete refund, we happily sent it to them. But so many people took advantage of the discount pricing on the other products, we ended up making more from our refund requests than we did off the original product!

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet

Risk Reversal Action Steps If you have not already done so, please immediately click on: http://www.abrahaminternetstrategies.com/register.htm Register for my event! Your internet business will be positively transformed by the information, inspiration, and specific action steps we will deliver to you. What are the 3 biggest, boldest promises you can make, and keep, that will transfer 100% of the risk to you. 1 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 2 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 3 ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ Using what you have learned in this report, and some of the sample guarantees, write a first draft of your new guarantee. _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

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Maximizing Your Results On The Internet Give your guarantee more specificity for your particular business, and your particular set of clients. Give your new guarantee more “dimension” by adding flair and bold expression of the risk reversal. Paint your clients a vivid picture of their success. _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

What steps will you do to communicate this bold new guarantee? Where on your site(s) will you publish it? Who else needs to be informed of this? _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

Sincerely,

27520 Hawthorne Blvd. Suite 263 Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274 • 310-265-1840

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