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Simple Copywriting Tips

Copywriting, what is it and how come it matters? Well whether or not you’ve discovered it, you’ve read a few forms of sales copy at some time or another. You could be watching a TV commercial message, a net banner ad or simply reading a magazine insert, either way its copywriting.

Copywriting is the art of selling individuals something with words most especially. If you have to do your own copy then it may be a little intimidating and for the most part it appears a lot easier than it really is.

All the same, there are a few things you are able to put into practice that will help achieve you excellent results. Here are a few great copywriting tips for novices.

Putting It Together

Don’t be frightened of lengthy sales copy. There’s a basic notion that the more copy you have on a page the less likely individuals will be to read it and really react to it. While this might be real in a few markets and niches, broadly speaking the more you write the better the reaction will be. Naturally this won’t hold true if your whole copy fails to affect or persuade individuals, but it’s still a crucial component.

The 1st is a headline that sticks out and gets the reader intrigued in your product. You are able to make the font a bit larger and spotlight it or bold the sales copy headline. If you're working on a site I'd keep the background white and the font black. Remember this is to look professional and not have assorted colors or fonts that will make it difficult to read. The same is true if it's a sales copy to be sent out to prospective customers.

You'll need to write in little paragraphs and provide details of your business and what products you have that may peak their interest. Keep the verbal description simple and don't get over complicated in you sales copy. Attempt and write in terms that everybody may understand, don’t get too complex about your service, and call attention to how it will benefit the customer in simple terms. Keep away from over hyping and bragging about your business or site, getting derogatory about your rivalry isn't good. Rather call attention to how you are able to benefit the buyer compared to the rivalry.

The final part of the sales copy ought to make the reader wish to purchase or contact your business. If you're writing sales copy on a site have a picture of your product with a concise description. This is where you'd put your purchase button or add to cart button. Your sales copy shouldn't have any flash type banners if it’s on a site. Most site visitors will click away with too many banners on the page.

Interject a little humor.

Utilizing humor and light-hearted publishing may help establish a relationship and get individuals to consider you a more believable source of info. This naturally helps with swaying the reader to do what you wish them to do, like make a sale or opt-in to an e-zine for instance.

Be observant. Individuals find situations that they may relate to funny. This is why so many stand-up comics start their jokes with, "Have you ever noticed...?" or "Why is it that...?"

Remember that wit is pain. It's sad but true that individuals find humor in the suffering of other people. Sure, it may be cruel, but what's funnier: somebody walking down the street and tripping over his shoestrings or somebody walking down the street and discovering a 20 dollar bill?

Surprise individuals! Hearing an amusing joke for the 8th time isn't very funny, is it? Be innovative and creative, putting off clichés that individuals have heard a million times.

Magnify. Writing about an event from your daily life, like cat sitting, may not be very funny, but cat sitting 6 cats while trying to clean the house for a visit from your boss may be.

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The Most Important Thing you Need to Know

There are a lot of advantages to writing ebooks, but the experience is priceless. Authoring something so involved is truly worth the time and effort, not simply for apportioning your knowledge, but for the feedback you get from those who read it.

All the same, when most individuals begin to think about composing an entire eBook, they make the error of believing it will be complicated. The key component for success with any eBook is authoring it and presenting it the right way to your intended audience.

What You Need To Know

It's crucial to be centered if you wish to compose an eBook that will bring in cash. This is the most crucial thing about authoring a great eBook: don't let your attention wander from your goal as the more data that you are able to include in your eBook the greater it will be. For instance, if you're composing an eBook about “cat training” you have to stick to that matter and not attempt to cover everything about cats.

If an individual chooses to purchase an eBook online, they're frequently looking for very directed info that may be utilized immediately. They don't wish to go through a whole bunch of frivolity before getting to the info they require.

Additionally, bear in mind that the caliber of your eBook relies on how well you produce it. Among the chief reasons why publishers reject books again and again is because they're written poorly. So if you wish to give your target audience something they'll like, along with great info, your presentation likewise matters.
No one will give your eBook very much credit or even wish to read if it is not composed in a professional fashion. You have to really certain of what you write and how you're delivering it.

Make certain that you're specific when you ask other people to review your eBook. Would you like review of your spelling and grammar? Or about the flux and the consistency? How about the caliber and usability of your info? You have to be extremely specific when you’re inviting feedback from individuals

so that you know what precisely are the changes that you have to make. Remember, authoring a great eBook takes work and time and that means that you have to take the feedback you get to heart and put it to use.

Platform

“Platform” is the publishing hoopla for a plan that you've developed to market your eBook once you’ve released it. Your platform consolidates a number of tools to circulate the word about your new or newest eBook. As the responsibility for marketing your book is mostly your own, you're not only the writer; you're your own publisher, also. In and of itself, you're totally in charge of getting the word out to anybody you wish to purchase and read your eBook.

As an eBook, published electronically for a likely readership that will get it, store it and read it is in an electronic data format, it stands to reason that you can reach that likely readership by electronic means. Here are a few of the things I've utilized to advertize my eBooks:

Review Books

Amazon and Barnes and Noble both enable me to provide a two-week lending of my book to a target area list of likely book reviewers associated with papers, magazines and blogs, who may help me to circulate the word about my eBook.

Smashwords goes beyond that: by their unparalleled couponing program, they let me send net coupons to this same target market, who may issue an indifferent review of my eBook for their particular readership. My blended target market reviewers get through to a potential huge readership nationwide.

Releases

In order to accomplish my plan for book reviewer and book purchaser recruitment, I formulate numerous press releases tailored to each particular demographic or geographic section.

Writer and Book Pages

Each of my selected publishers provides me with a free writer page and a separate marketing page for each of my eBooks, which enable me to provide relevant info about my eBooks and my pertinent background, likewise links to my appropriate blogs and an chance to sample and (hopefully) sell my eBook.

I utilize 2 of my blogs, to advertize any fresh developments about my eBooks. If you’re an author and/or a writer, I strongly advocate that you take up blogging. It’s an awesome way to express yourself on a steady basis, and it’s not as hard as you may believe. As a matter of fact, WordPress.com makes it really simple with stepwise tutorials and ready-made, neat and clean templates that take all the hard stuff out of it. Likewise, WordPress blogs tend to bear very few W3C Validation errors, which aids in maximizing SEO.

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Getting Started: The Tools You Need

List building is all about connecting with your target audience by offering them high quality information in exchange for their subscription.

Once a subscriber is a confirmed member of your list, you can begin sending promotional based follow up emails in balance with relevant and useful content based on your overall market.

Email marketers (like you!) collect leads using a combination of squeeze pages and opt-in forms. These forms are generated by your autoresponder provider and are embedded into the HTML code of your squeeze page template.

Each time a visitor to your squeeze page enters in their name and email address, they are added to your mailing list database, and become an active subscriber of your newsletter.

List building helps faciliate the process of converting subscribers into active customers, since once your prospect has been added to our mailing list, you are able to develop a relationship with them, that will encourage sales as well as repeat sales (which will make up the larger majority of your email marketing income).

In order to begin building a profitable email marketing campaign however, you will need to make sure that you have all of the tools that are required, including:

• Professional Autoresponder Account

With autoresponder services like www.GetResponse.com and www.Aweber.com, you are able to set up an unlimited number of mailing lists, each one featuring customized code that serves as your opt-in box. By segmenting your lists, you will be able to tailor your emails so that they directly communicate with targeted groups of subscribers who are interested in specific information or topics.

• Squeeze Page

A squeeze page houses your opt-in form and provides a place for your contacts to find you, evaluate what you are offering and make the decision to become an active subscriber of your list.

A squeeze page is very similar to a sales page in terms of its primary function is to pull in customers and motivate them to take action, in this case, subscribe to your list.

That call of action is essential in creating high preformance squeeze pages, and you must place emphasis on ensuring that your visitors are directed to fill in the opt-in form, otherwise they will not be added to your list.

You need to clearly direct visitors to enter in their name and email address as well as instruct them to confirm their request to join your list (if you are using double opt-in).

One thing to keep in mind when developing your squeeze page is that it should motivate visitors in the same way that a traditional sales page should, however, the actual structure of your squeeze page will be very different.

With sales pages, they are typically designed to offer as much information about a particular product or service as possible, since the main focus is on transforming a visitor into a customer.

With a squeeze page, you aren't asking your visitor to make a decision to purchase or committ to anything other than to subscribe to your mailing list where they are rewarded with a free product.

Keeping this offer or giveaway in mind, when you develop a squeeze page, you need to have a strong focus on your market, and design your offer around an existing problem, need or question.

To come up with the best incentive offer possible, you'll need to thoroughly evaluate your market, as well as competing offers so that you can create a relevant product that is in demand and likely to capture attention from your target audience.

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Utilizing Offline Marketing For Extra Income

101 Ways To Promote Your Business For Maximum Profits

This Book Will Show You How To Put Creative Marketing, Free Publicity, and Strategic Joint Ventures to Work for Your Business So You Can Sit Back And Watch Your Profits Explode!

101 Ways To Promote Your Business For Maximum Profits

John Ritskowitz hosted a teleseminar with Michel Fortin, David Garfinkel, Yanik Silver, and JP Maroney. Entitled “Million Dollar Roundtable,” it was a chance for these marketing pros to share some of their best secrets for marketing offline, which is something more online Marketers should be doing. Ideally we should all be marketing both offline and online.

Well these folks delivered the goods, and while the call lasted about 2 hours, it still wasn’t enough time to get to everything (it never is, right?). So John compiled some of the ideas they talked about on the call, plus lots more ideas to cover the offline marketing spectrum.

Some of these ideas are more traditional, such as yellow pages advertising and classified ads. Of course that doesn’t mean they should be neglected.

Other ideas are traditional, but not used as much, or I should say not always used as effectively as they could. Direct response marketing and publicity are two that come to mind.

And then there are really creative ideas that are often overlooked, such as valuable joint ventures and strategic alliances. Some of these ideas have the potential to really deliver a lot of leads and sales with minimal traditional “work.”

You’ll find these ideas start out somewhat simplistically and gradually get more creative and complex. So dig in and start thinking about how you could apply these ideas to your business today!

Part I – Traditional Offline Marketing

Don’t think of these methods as too simple or mundane. They are very effective when done right and combined with other techniques in this report.

1) Classified Ads – This is something everyone should be testing in some form or another. It’s great for lead generations. You should still have a strong benefit-driven headline and a clear call to action. Free reports work very well with classifieds. My local paper, the Hartford Courant even has an ongoing deal of 3 lines for 3 days – for free! Even adding more lines only ends up costing a few bucks. With a price like that, there’s no reason anyone with a website should not be testing ways to draw traffic to the site with classifieds.

2) Direct Mail – Nothing beats direct response when it comes to results-driven proven advertising. And messages sent directly to your highly targeted market via direct mail can deliver a terrific return on investment (ROI) when tested properly. There’s a wealth of information on direct marketing by Michel Fortin, David Garfinkel, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, and many more experts. Here are some sites where you can learn more:

• http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com - Home of the Gary Halbert Letter
• http://www.dankennedy.com - Dan Kennedy’s site
• http://www.srds.com - The Standard Rate & Data (SRDS) List Book, a great resource to locate mailing lists of nearly any type you can imagine. You can also find it in some larger city libraries.
• http://www.referenceusa.com - Reference USA is a great place to get compiled lists by industry, SIC, demographics and more. It contains names, addresses and lots of other great information on more than 12 million U.S. businesses, 102 million U.S. residents, 683,000 U.S. health care providers, 1 million Canadian businesses, and 11 million Canadian residents.
• http://www.usps.com - The US Postal Service website has a variety of tools and educational materials about direct mail as well.

3) Postcards – Yes, postcards are a form of direct mail, but it warrants its own category. Postcards are cheaper to produce and mail than full-blown direct mail packages or sales letters, and they are great for generating leads. Like classified ads, a free report or free gift often works well here. Postcards are also a great way to stay in touch with your customers and prospects, and they also work well as part of a sequence of mailings. A good place to go for customized postcards is http://www.usps.com (the US Postal Service website), because the USPS has partnered with a company that will print and mail your postcards for you! Best of all, you only pay for the postage (i.e. FREE printing costs). Hint: be sure to include yourself on the mailing list so you can get your own mailing as well.

4) Yellow Pages – Another great resource that is often underutilized or used ineffectively. Yellow page ads are great because when someone sees your ad, they are already in the market for your product or service. Yellow page ads need to be benefits-driven, with your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) stated clearly and boldly (remember, this is the one place where your prospects will see your ad alongside all of your competitors). You want your ad to stand out from the clutter. Use a direct response type of ad, and again, free gifts or premiums work well here.

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The Concept

Before starting out with this eBook, we need to know what the terms surrounding rich marketer and poor marketer. This will help put everything in perspective. In today’s terms, a rich marketer is someone who has access to different resources and utilizes them. A rich marketer is someone who knows what it means to run a successful business and is able to cater to the market in the wisest manner. The rich marketer understands the importance of money and at the same time does not flinch from making an investment, either in improving the quality of the product or in promoting the product to the market, because it is the promotion that will bring in more money to do bigger stuff.

In essence, a rich marketer is a person who knows what the market is all about and gives it what it wants. This helps the rich marketer to continue on the path of progress and go ahead in business pursuits.

So, where does the poor marketer falter? The truth is that the poor marketer has access to the same resources that the rich marketer has, but the problem is that the poor marketer does not know about them. The poor marketer delves in ignorance, like the proverbial frog in the well.

The world has undergone a drastic change in the 21st Century. Like in the feudal ages, the world is no longer divided into ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The demarcation is not so simple at present. Today, the distinction is between the ‘knows’ and the ‘know-nots’. The people who know how to implement the methods that they have access to and the people who do not know about these methods, forget their implementation. This is what is creating the divide between the rich and the poor today.

If you are reading between the lines, you will understand that the world of today has resources for everyone. Everything is there for everyone to use. But, not everyone is using those things in the way they should.

This is what we are going to see in this chapter—the divide between the rich marketer and the poor marketer. We are going to see what inspired us to come up with this concept. We will also see how the reality is true, in any age, but it is only the surficial aspects that tend to change from one age to another.

Where the Idea Stems from

With a plethora of information on “get rich quick” ideas and “self-help” aids, it is easy to wonder who we should listen to and who to ignore. Robert Kiyosaki of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” fame and a founding member of the Elevation Group is one of those people who when they speak on a subject are worth listening too. Why do I say that?
He has sat where so many of us are currently sitting. In the current economic climate, with so many questions about whether or not any business or investment decisions we make will actually make or lose us money, he has already trod the path of indecision. He, like most of us, has sat facing unpaid bills and the pressures of an income cannot sufficiently cover household and family expenses and has learned how to turn things around. He has learned how to use the economy to make his wealth.
His approach is not a simple get rich quick scheme, but a planned and focused approach to using the tools already in our hands to create a future that many can only dream, Education is the key to open this door of opportunity. Reflecting on the past, learning about trends and using them to gain valuable insights into the present and future is the approach Robert advocates. As we do this in business and in our personal lives, we can turn around our financial affairs and reap the same rewards he has achieved in this process.

Many of Roberts’s books have achieved bestseller status. He is a highly regarded in the business world and as an author who has helped countless ordinary people achieve their dreams of a better future. His websites and blogs detail the life choices that confronted him, to either stick with the status quo or see gaining wealth as something negative or to seize the opportunity and use the current economic climate to find a better way of dealing with the resources and assets at his disposal.
Robert chose this path and the result is “Richer Dad,” an innovative approach to helping people make choices and decisions. Robert uses the education approach to help people take charge of the financial planning of their lives and businesses. His online websites and EBooks provide free resources to help guide readers to make personal choices that will benefit them as they seek to decide how to invest money safely.

This is a guide for those who are in business and who are seeking to use online marketing as a tool for their business success. The book describes the importance of creating a niche-marketing environment. It explores the common problems people make in online marketing and will assist you to identify your personal business niche. You will learn how to achieve an effective marketing strategy for your unique niche and how to use the proven Richer Dad principles to achieve dominance in a highly competitive market place.

Kiyosaki’s Financial Precepts and Effective Marketing

Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, is a popular name all over the world. He is an American, a fourth-general Japanese American, to be precise. He has written several books, all in the financial niche, all of them designed to be motivational and self-help books, intended to take people towards the path of progress in their business. He is known for his keen financial insight. Most of his advice stems from his own precepts. He tells people of the many ways in which they can achieve financial liberation while managing their own enterprise.

Kiyosaki does not differentiate between the different ways in which one might carry on their moneymaking tactics. He does not tell you to become a businessperson or an investor or a marketer. Instead, he tells you what you must do in order to attract wealth doing whatever you are doing. That is what makes him a special author.
He has special views about the concept of marketing though. Though Kiyosaki has not spoken about marketing directly in any of his works, but his perceptions are all clear. He says that if you intend to have a great rapport with your clients, if you want to grow your business, then the one way in which you can do that is by increasing your network. When your network is expanded, you can tap into it to make the most of your business.

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About The Viral Buzz

Viral marketing buzz occurs daily, in normal, unspectacular circumstances and when you least anticipate it.

The grapevine, rumors, the whispers in your ear are what buzz is all about. Those little flecks of information that individuals share over a cup of java….the outrageous occurrence that somebody just saw and can’t wait to describe or the unbelievably cool product that a acquaintance of a friend just purchased are the body and soul of buzz…and buzz marketing or viral marketing, depending upon what you wish to call it.

We all recognize what a computer virus is. It spreads from one PC to another in the blink of an eye. Now “Buzz” is the virus of promoting… it spreads to other buyers and has an epidemic of sales of your product or service.

It may be that “e-mail this to an acquaintance” button that's simply calling to you to click it, or a pair of real (and really satisfied) lips whispering persuasive endorsements into receptive ears; buzz marketing may transmit your business message at warp speed and do it at no cost to you!

Discussion boards, blogs, e-mail lists and product review web sites are the conversations that consumers have with each other and represent the biggest collection of word-or-mouth or buzz advertising that's ever existed. The Buzz About The Buzz

Producers of products and services are slowly starting to recognize that what Consumer reports say about their products and services isn't nearly as crucial as what consumers say to each other about them. Therefore, we have the ballooning of viral marketing…..word-of-mouth…or buzz.

And... We'll take 2 case studies as concrete proof. MSN Hotmail’s viral marketing success tale is practically in the domain of folk lore. Back in 95, when Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith approached the venture capital firm of Draper Fisher & Jervetson with their thought for a free e-mail service, the firm liked the theme but wondered how they'd draw in members and build a company around it. Nowadays there are more than thirty million participating members.

The Hotmail user base developed faster than any media company in history; faster than CNN and AOL! Hotmail tripled its size in a single year. The present sign-up rate for new memberships frequently exceeds a 1000000 per week.

Tom Draper is the one who really suggested that they ought to append an ad message to each outbound e-mail: “P.S. Get your free email at Hotmail” and called it viral marketing.

It was a really bold move at the time. Would users resist having this automatic addition to the content of their private messages? Hotmail seasoned the idea by clearly marking the promotional plug and taking out the “P.S.”.

Yet, every departing message conveyed an ad and a subtle implied endorsement by the sender. The recipient recognized that the sender was a Hotmail user and that this new free of charge e-mail thing seemed to work for them. Every new user became a 'salesman' and the content spread like an exceedingly contagious virus.

At the end of the day, Hotmail’s formula for success is pretty easy. It delivers the qualities consumers truly want in an e-mail service: speed, dependability, and ease of use and a rich set of characteristics. And helped by the might of viral marketing, the rest as they state, is history.

The following success story involves a little communication tool you likely have in your personal computer right now.

The Little Tools

In 96, 4 Israeli men, 2 of whom didn’t even finish senior high, dreamed up a communication system called ICQ (I Seek YOU).

After their ground forces service, the 4 men took jobs at a local PC store. At night, they worked at their dream project….a program for blink of an eye easy net communication. They named their company Mirabilis.

Net service was really expensive in Israel, so the men moved to California and later to Greater New York. It took less than eighteen months for more than ten million PC users to download and install ICQ. ICQ was free of charge.

Those ten million individuals had heard about ICQ by “word-of-mouse” advertisement. (What we call Viral marketing or Buzz marketing). Mirabilis stated a solid ‘NO” to Microsoft, but accepted a three hundred million dollar take over from AOL. ICQ then swiftly exploded to 100-million downloads and a 1000000 fresh subscribers every week.

The interesting principle about ICQ is their marketing. They simply didn’t do any marketing. All of their efforts were directed at inspiring users to spread the word. One Way To Do It They made it simple to spread the word by utilizing the standard e-mail that will ask your friends to join, but the software may likewise be instructed to scan your address book and send all your acquaintances invitation letters. Their thought was to construct a tool that includes an inherent mechanism for circulating the work and then simply letting it grow!

Now, to the meat and potatoes – You might not produce a program like hotmail or ICQ but your products may go viral, bringing in tons of subscribers and revenue.

Fasten your seatbelts as you're about to learn how. How may e-books be utilized as a tool for viral marketing? Let’s suppose that you sell products utilized in baking. If on your site you provide a free of charge download of an e-book with recipes that require ingredients you sell, it's conceivable that you'll sell more of the products that you manufacture. That's the primary concept but there are a lot of ways that e-books may help acquire free viral marketing for you.

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Foreword

Making a success of any business today would be better served if the internet was used. The internet being the far reaching tool that it is, helps to create the desired revenue for the successful business venture. The internet, specifically the social media tools have over time proven to be the most successful. Learn about Twitter here.

Twitter Basics

Tools like twitter can effective create the attention that is necessary in getting the information about the business to the wider audience. This is done with virtually no cost involved.

The planned site must is attractive enough to be the cause of the twitter exercise thus ensuring the desired amount of traffic to the site. Providing material that is worth discussion or viewing with the intention of dispersing information is very important as this is what will cause the interest to stay.

The Basics

As the twitter platform is comparatively personal. Ensuring the exchanges have some form of follow ups is beneficial to the host. If the users are made to feel special, then it is almost guaranteed that the host site will garner the desired traffic which will eventually be converted to revenue.

Spending some time to personally address issues or comments will encourage the user to stay loyal as they perceive their participation to be well received and valued.
Being consistent, as in a daily basis also is another element to consider at it allows feedback and comments to be shared from a more current standpoint.

Building a rapport with the users is always a good idea as both parties will eventually attest to benefit from the exchanges. Building the list of customers, prospects, potential buyers all depends on whether the material being discussed is of high interest value.

Having a great product or service is of no value if it is not made known to the masses.

Know The Difference Between Posting And Spamming

Spamming is perhaps the most annoying application that most internet users are weary of. Basically the spam element involved the sending of material in a continuous and abundant manner causing the recipient to be overwhelmed with unwanted material.

This will basically cause a lot of problems when the inbox becomes jammed with all the unwanted solicitations.

Therefore one needs to be careful to ensure the material posted is designed and posted in a way to does not cause it to fall into the spam category.

The Differences

Most spasms target individual users who use the direct email messaging platform regularly. These email listing are more often than not “stolen” from other more legitimate sources with the intention of using the said list to post the material categorized as spam.

The two main types of spam but both are an equally unwelcomed solicitation.

Postings however are very different in its original design and intention aspect. Though having the same desired reach of the target audience, the posting element is used to create visibility on the internet but with the distinct difference of wanting to create an interaction.

The message is replied to in the form of email, internet forums and use net. The benefits of posting may include being able to harness direct visitors to the site, branding position, promotion of the site and its material of services or products, creating external links and many more positive contributions.

Posting also provides maximum visibility online. The classified ad site can be used without being feared as being categorized as spam and with this comes the advantage of being marketed effectively.

The hopeful result here is that through the posting even the uninterested viewer may be convinced enough to make the transition into making a more positive commitment.

Be Clear On What You Are Promoting

Getting noticed on the online business arena is only possible if viewers are clear on what they are viewing. Put up ambiguous posting will not help to ensure the target audience nor will it ensure a successful presence on the internet.

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Obtaining Information

There is a radical change in which we are obtaining information today. The number of options of obtaining information has increased, but what is most interesting is that the number of ways in which we can harness this information has also increased by leaps and bounds.

Today there is so much we can do with the information we get and we can get it from so many places that our options have become almost endless.

But, to start with, we shall see about the differences in getting information. Here we talk of some ways of acquiring information that we can use in the contemporary sense.

Human Beings

The human being has always been an inquisitive species. It is because of this reason that we have managed to reach this stage of development and progress in our evolution. We have consistently made progress and we have always believed that Necessity is the mother of invention. It is on account of that that we have been able to see our shortcomings, we have been able to see what we are lacking in, and then have been able to develop the things that we need to enhance our existence.

This has been a continuous process throughout history. Humans have always been involved in the process of obtaining information and then harnessing it to improve their way of living. We did it 5,000 years ago, we are doing it now, and we will continue to do so 5,000 years down the line.

The onus of our evolutionary strides has always rested on our inquisitive mind… our need to find information, our tendency to observe, our penchant for questioning things that happen around us. This is what converted us from Homo neanderthalensis to Homo erectus, then from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens and from Homo sapiens to our current form Homo sapiens sapiens. It is our questing mind that has helped us throughout our evolution, and the questing mind hasn’t still been satiated. We are constantly seeking information now as well. We are always on a drive to find out more, whether it is about a new route to reach downtown or it is about how we can make a synthetic DNA molecule.

Inquisitiveness has been ingrained in us. We are born with it. The first reaction of a baby when they come in to the world is to look all around, take up everything that they can in those tiny staring eyes of theirs. The mind is processing information very fast at this rate, and as it processes more information, it is becoming sharper as well. It is amassing everything that it is exposed to. The baby’s mind understands what different things are, how they are useful, how they can be used, what they are called, what happens around them and so on. They build on experiences. No one can teach a baby everything that they want to learn. Parents and teachers have a streamlined process of transferring information to babies; but their basic education is through observing everything that happens around them. This would not have been possible if we were born with a questioning mind. It is this inquisitive mind that keeps telling us things.

And this process continues throughout our lives. There is not a moment in our lives where we do not learn, where we do not acquire information. Right now, you are getting informed as you are reading this. You get informed when you go to work. You get informed when you cook your daily meal, when you shop, when you watch a movie, when you play with the kids. Your information acquiring process does not even stop when you are simply walking down the road. Whether you know it or not, the information is coming into you and your brain is processing it… retaining what is most important to you and pushing back what you don’t need to remember to the deeper annals of its intricate structure.

Obtaining Information

In the Stone Age, information was obtained through observation. We saw that it turned bright and dark alternately. We observed that was a regular phenomenon that happened without a break. The concept of day was born. We realized that when two pieces of flint are rubbed together, they can create a spark. We learned how to make fire. We understood that water pours from the sky in the form of rain, and we can shelter ourselves in caves. The first homes were created. We understood that man and woman can mate and create progeny. We understood that people united in this manner should stay together for their various needs. The concept of family was born. We understood that families can do better if they huddle together. They can fight natural calamities and predating animals in a better manner. Communities were born.

Later we understood that we could plant seeds in the ground and crops came up. We learned our first method of sustenance. Then we had free time. We realized that we had an artistic instinct. We could create things of beauty. The first rock paintings were just a precursor to our different art forms. Our monosyllabic sounds evolved into language.

Throughout this evolutionary process, we acquired information all the way. There was no one to teach us; it was only our keen sense of observation that got us going. But, we did not stop at that. That is what makes us different from animals around us. We have a talent, a special skill, for taking what we have and trying to improve it all the time. So, we took our innate genius of observation ahead. We began to observe both in the micro world and in the macro world. We saw things smaller than our eyes could see and we saw things more distant than our vision could see. We understood that microorganisms exist; we understood that there is space. We tried to hear things that our ears did not allow us to listen. We understood there are infrasonic waves and we understood there are ultrasonic waves.

Today, we are living in times when we know a lot about the world, definitely more than what we knew in the Stone Age. There is still a long way to go… what we know already may not even be the equivalent of an electron in the composition of the entire world, but we know something that’s more than what we knew to start with.

This is amazing progress. And, the best thing is that we have not put a stop on our progress yet. We are moving on.

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Introduction

Nothing warms the cockles of a salesperson more than getting a new client. Often you are able to secure that new client because you have a quality core good or service that is provided at a competitive price.

While you may not make a great deal off that initial offering, there will no doubt be the chance to build on your initial rapport with your new client and engage in the task many sales people know as “up-selling.”

That is where the concept of the Profit Tunnel comes into play.

The Profit Tunnel is your pathway to building a relationship with your customer that begins with the purchase of initial goods or services. Once that initial relationship is established, you build on that relationship by evaluating the needs of your client and identify other goods or services that will also benefit your customer.

As you are able to acquaint, interest, and finally sell additional and often higher priced items to your customer, your profit margin will increase. The Profit Tunnel model works very well whether you are working with a brick and mortar business or going strictly with an online presence.

In both instances, the task involves winning the confidence of the prospect, identifying entry level products or services that will be of interest to the prospect, selling the prospect on the goods or services, and then continuing to offer additional products or enhancements that will make life even easier for that former prospect that is now your customer.

Low Ticket

When it comes to winning the confidence of a prospect, nothing speaks louder than a good deal. Persons who are responsible for securing goods and services for their employer love to save the company money.

It enhances his or her reputation with the officers and owners. At the same time, no one wants to end up with a low cost service that ends up being a dud. This means the good or service needs to perform well along with being cost efficient.

Your job is to match low cost quality goods or services with the business type of your prospect. Once you demonstrate how one of your low cost offerings will consistently outperform the competition and save money for the prospect’s employer, you will be poised to help roll out your low cost offering throughout the organization, making your profit in volume distribution initially.

Once your offering is functioning throughout the organization, you may find that not only do you have the ear of your initial contact, but now you have the ability to interact with persons throughout the organization that may be interested in other offerings that you can supply.

Providing additional goods or services that are in a similar price range will be another way you will increase the profit margin. This is sometimes referred to as lateral selling.

Simply put, you are not really pushing items with a higher price tag, or even enhancements to services you have already sold which would increase the profits. You are simply broadening your current situation to include more of the same, from a charge perspective.

There is nothing wrong with lateral selling. In fact, it can be quite profitable. However, in time it reaches a point where there is no more room for more of the same and you need to move on to the next level.

Mid Ticket

Now safely ensconced with several low cost offerings, you can begin to look at other needs of your customer. Chances are you have goods or services that may be used on a less frequent basis, but carry a higher price tag.

With your low cost items working just fine for your client, you will easily be able to gain attention for these mid priced offerings.

As part of your presentation, it is important to demonstrate not only what you have to offer today, but also be prepared to present the attributes of the offering in such a way that your client can begin to brainstorm possibly uses within the organization.

You may want to have one or two ideas ready, just to prime the thinking process, if necessary. But the more your client can come up with possible uses, the greater his ownership of using the mid ticket item will become, and the closer you will be to another sale.

Be prepared to have to wait until the timing is right to spring your mid ticket item on your client. If the item is only going to be used a few times a year, the interest level may not be there until the time is growing near for the next relevant event.