What is More Important, The Product or The Sales Technique?
The other day a friend of mine wrote a post about a certain “Internet Marketing Big Shot” who is apparently part of the 2% who make huge amounts of money with Internet marketing.
Now, nothing wrong with people making a lot of money, I firmly believe there is enough to go round for people who are willing to do what it takes to become successful and I can only applaud those who really do.
However, I do have a problem with people selling stuff that is not up to scratch, which got me to think about the following.
In order to be a success online nowadays, it seems more important than anything else that your sales techniques are up to scratch and that even worthless products can generate a huge income as long as you know how to sell “air” (or freezers to Eskimo’s).
A few months ago, when starting this blog, I made a serious decision to not buy any more ebooks since most all of them only ended up crowding my hard disk and gather dust. Besides, if you are willing to spend some time, all information found in ebooks is readily available for free, and I have come to the believe there really is no secret to internet marketing, although so many guru’s are trying their hardest to make you believe there is.
Going back to the product my friend wrote about, it kind of did sound interesting enough to have another closer look and in the end I did sign up through his affiliate link, because after all, in his post he said the product looked good so far.
It is actually a real product instead of another ebook and all I needed to pay was $11.99 postage to get the book delivered to my door, and with summer offering plenty of time reading books while sunbathing a bit, I decided to go ahead and order.
Now, here is where things get tricky.
First of all I made sure to directly cancel a monthly subscription for a magazine about Internet marketing. I will receive the first copy for free along with the manual, but knowing myself, I better cancel straight away otherwise I forget and end up paying a monthly subscription without realising it (sorry pal!).
I did expect to see another offer page after ordering the initial book, after all, it seems to have become common practice to offer a “deal you will never see again” once signing up for a free product. This marketing guru however went a step too far in my opinion.
First he offered me another product for what he said “the best deal online” but after declining and wanting to go to the member area in order to download something that came along with the initial paper manual, he showed me another sales page for the same product, this time with a huge discount.
Yeah right, I thought, let’s skip straight to the member area, so again I optioned out of this “exceptional one time offer”.
Much to my surprise however, I landed on another sales page for the same product that had already been offered twice, but this time the price had actually gone down at least 75%! And as I was told on the sales page, I really could not live without this product if I were serious about making money online. And who would not believe this Guru, after all, he was showing his houses and cars and huge affiliate cheques and I could be just like him.
It was late though and I just wanted to get to the member area, so again I opted out of this offer, bad luck on me, now I will never make millions, but hey, I am pretty happy with what I do so far!
Guess what… apparently I had reached bottom price on product number one, because now I was lead to a sales page for product number 2, a marketing course that would normally go for thousands of dollars and wow it must have been my lucky day because now I could get full and exclusive access for only $997!
And even though I am like any other affiliate marketer and have thousands of dollars of cash saved under my pillow, I decided to pass up on this absolutely extraordinary offer, because I was sure I would see at least another few sales pages again lowering the price.
“No thanks (fill in name of IM Guru), I just want to go to the member area and I realise I will never ever see this great offer” and all of a sudden I had made 300 bucks!!!
That is right, by not taking up the offer; price had gone down to $697! Needless to say I was very annoyed at this point and thought that I would finally reach the member area by passing up again, but this time I was lead to a sales page saying that maybe I did not have enough money to pay at once, so a convenient payment plan was offered and I could make 3 easy instalments, (because after all, if I couldn’t just dish out the initial big bucks, I really needed access to his exclusive program).
In a desperate attempt to finally go to the member area, although I really started thinking, “why would I even want to go to a member area?” and was about to just close the window, I again opted out of all these offers and free bonuses, “obviously” throwing away thousands of dollars, and clicked “go to the member area” button for the last time.
So why am I writing all this you might think, well there is a clue to this whole story.
The day after I received an email from my friend, saying that he had noticed I had signed up through his link and warning me to opt out of the subscription if I did not want the monthly magazine sent to my house. (Thank you for that!)
He said he had already received the paper manual which was supposedly filled with IM secrets and even though it was a pleasant read and nice to finally get something in print instead of all those e-books, he also said most information in the book is stuff we already now and he was yet to reach to the part were the real secrets were going to be revealed.
One comment he made though set off the trigger for me to write this long post, and it was down the line of “a lot to be learned from this guru’s sales techniques”.
Now, I am sure this guru is making a lot of money and I am sure not all he is selling is absolutely crap, but his sales page sequence and seeing just how much he was trying to sell his products for, and more importantly, see how much he was willing to drop his price, made me wonder.
Just how much can a product really be worth if there is a 75% drop in price within a few pages?
Plus…
If the free product he is giving out and obviously using in order to convince people to buy his (I believe well overpriced) program, does not really offer new information, will his program be any good to start with?
Maybe there is a lot to learn from this guru’s selling technique, but would I really be comfortable using this kind of stuff on people who just like me are trying to make a good living online?
The answer for me really is NO. I don’t want to trick people into signing up for monthly subscriptions along with a free offer, nor do I want to make money selling MMO products.
I still keep believing that the true secret of making money online can be put together in a few lines, no 100 page manual needed, no expensive exclusive programs needed, just common sense and a lot of hard work and dedication.
Plus, I am a bigger believer of Karma. What goes around comes around so I really don’t want to make money over the back of others.
And guess what? In order to be successful as an Internet marketer, there is no need to sell stuff you would not be caught dead buying yourself.
So what do YOU think is more important…. The product or the sales technique?
Filed under: Making Money • Personal
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They each have their place and should work in unison.
Say I have a script to sell (ok I have 3) if the script is good I should accentuating the story and how an audience will react. If I have a bad script then I am selling certain aspects of the story and I am selling hype.
Hype sucks when the product does not deliver. As with everything it is all about balance.
[Reply]
Mirjam Reply:
July 8th, 2008 at 8:09 am
right Jim,
so the question remains, would you oversell a product just to grow your own bankaccount, because after all, that is what I see happening around me just way too often, people selling “air” and the same ol´same old, hyping it up with flashy salespages and convincing sales techniques….?
[Reply]
The Movie Whore Reply:
July 8th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I guess it is a matter of ethics.
If you have none, sell the air.
If you have a strong personal code of ethics you sell a legitimate product at a fair price.
[Reply]
Mirjam Reply:
July 9th, 2008 at 1:56 am
I´d rather go the second path… maybe too much, but hey … I want to be able to look in the mirror and still like what I see
Mirjam:
You are smart and not being tricked by those marketing craps. Unfortunately, many people so desperate to make money online fall into that trap.
There are many scripts or sites doing that to increase the sales landing page conversion rate up to 300%.
Why many people doing so? Because it works. With just one sales, they can make 500% profit. It pays for all their services (hosting, scripts, etc).
It’s like TV advertisements.
So you end up paying $99.99 * 3 = ~$300 + $75 shipping charge. IT’s totally $375 for a product that is only worth $19.99 retail price.
Why it’s working, because it is using the human nature of curiosity. We are seeing more and more Internet Marketer teaching viral marketing, YouTube marketing, IM marketing, e-Book marketing, affiliate marketing. They are basically selling “NOTHING”, but information about how to trick people to pay.
Anyway, I am glad that you did not fall into that trap!
Terence Chang’s last blog post..Weekend Confession 11 – Where I was? Where will I be?
[Reply]
Mirjam Reply:
July 8th, 2008 at 8:17 am
I wouldn´t say it is just the curiousity that makes us buy into this crap, rather the sense they are creating in our mind of really not being able to live with this “unbelievable, incredible product”.
It is all a mind game, working on the flaws of visitors, touching them were it hurts most and abusing those flaws in order to cash in.
(Are you always low on money and struggling to pay your rent? Use this sure proof money making machine and you can buy whatever house you want! You are too fat and wouldn´t you love to be slim and sexy? Get this machine and you too will look like a superstar!)
I know it is done because it works, but eventhough this sales technique works, it doesn´t make it right
[Reply]
Hey Mirjam,
Nice post!
I’d say that we are all on a journey where we experience and learn new things, and therefore:
I think your signing up for this product was a good move. Even if you would receive a piece of junk in the mail (although, I believe you would eventually enjoy it after all), the real benefit is getting accustomed with a new sales process.
The continuous drop in price for the product on subsequent pages does not indicate the quality of the product, in my opinion. It just says that the guy marked it up a bit
Think how much does it cost to develop a good product… let’s say $1,000US. You start selling it at $97 or 197$ and break even in a month, if you know what you’re doing. Another month to pad your wallet and pay the rent.
But then, it is really up to you to do whatever you please with the price, the goal is to sell, if one doesn’t want it for $197 he may want it for $50..
This way you get to sell, which is eventually the goal. So, the quality is nothing to do with it.
Wheew, I hope I didn’t exhaust you.
Cheers,
Alex
P.S.
I wonder who is that mystery friend of yours?
[Reply]
Mirjam Reply:
July 8th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Hey Alex, good to see you here, commenting
LOL I did not want to reveal the name of my mystery friend, without having consulted with him/her if that was okay
:P
Reading and rereading your explanation on the quality theory, I gotta say I don´t agree with you. If somebody is willing to sell a product for $50, that is real value given to the product in his mind, eventhough it might have cost him a $1000 to create the product, that doesn´t mean it is actually worth a $1000!
I´d even go a step further, eventhough in his mind the product is worth $50 it might even be worth less, it only indicates a personal bottom price, but it could very well be possible that the real value is only a few bucks.
I see it happen all too often, the selling of “air” on internet, even bought books about it back in the good ol´ days before I decided not to buy just any book “I really had to have” (or what they made me think I needed).
These books went on and on explaining on just how to create an ebook, giving leads to just were to get free content you could use to create those books and than explain how to trick your visitors into buying it with all these sales techniques.
Now be honest, doesn´t that make you feel stupid?
I know it made me feel stupid, because they were explaining step for step just how to make people fall into the same crap I had just fallen for!
I realize everybody is responsable for their own action, and if they want to spend $100´s on products really not worth it, so be it, but you will see that in the end, everybody that has been into internet marketing for a longer time stays away from buying those crappy products although some might keep on trying to sell them to newbies.
None of those products share any secret (simply because there aren´t any secrets to success!!!) and they know it comes down to hard work and dedication untill you reach the point where you have more money to spend and you can start outsourcing things, invest in better software that automates your business etc etc, but even then, it all boils down to a few simple things: BUSINESS SKILLS, DEDICATION AND WORK ETHICS.
But going back to the human nature: greed and laziness many times blocks the road to real wealth because we fall into believing that there are secrets to become rich without having to work for it, after all, it does sound like a dream too good to be true!
As long as we keep buying into this crap fluffed up to be the “most important product you could ever buy”, our focus is taken off of what really matters!
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I too think that each one is complementary and incomplete with the help of other. A good product with no sales techniques being work out would produce no effective results indeed and at the same time a bad product with sufficient sales activities will also be a disaster. What one needs is an optimum balance between both of them. Your blog is fabulous and here it you have compelled me to bookmark this one: http://del.icio.us/britneyvaughan
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1.Focus on why they should buy – not their objections:
The idea here is that while you are building up the benefits associated with using your product, they will be minimizing their resistance to it. By focusing on what you know the prospect likes, you are building up the importance of the positive and reducing the importance of the negatives.
2.Sell the benefits – not the product:
You’ve heard this one before, but it is worth repeating. In most cases, you’re not selling your product, you’re selling the benefits the product will produce. In other words, you’re not selling digital phones, you’re selling the ability to communicate from anywhere. You are selling freedom to leave the confines of the office and still be accessible. You’re selling the ability to have a more flexible work schedule. You’re selling peace of mind for long trips. You’re selling security. Get to the emotional or financial benefits and you’re on to something!
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