Action Seminar 3: From Planning… to Doing
In this third “no pitch allowed” seminar we continue the theme of taking quick action and learning/adjusting as you go.
Stan starts it off by disclosing his method of taking notes and summarizing the takeaways–what you want to do and how to do it, so when you get home you have an actual plan…not just a pile of notes that will end up on your top shelf along with the notes from countless other seminars.
There is a lot here for people in all stages of building their businesses…from how to design an effective website and get your email delivered and opened to some sophisticated data mining strategies that give you the best shot at high conversion rates for direct mail campaigns.
Along with the always popular copy court and hot seats, where selected members of the audience get their copy, website or business plan analyzed by the best in the business…
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Stan Dahl: Creating and Implementing Your Personal Action Plan
Stan Dahl kicked off the 3rd edition of the Action Seminar, speaking about how to set goals and create a plan to achieve them.
He stressed that you must follow processes that are proven to work, evaluate your progress (what is working and what isn’t), adjust as necessary and keep going.
You should fail as cheaply and as fast as possible and adjust.
You also have to break your goals down into a series of steps…a series of destinations.
He also introduced his system of taking notes. He discloses the questions you should ask for each action you want to taks.
This will help you take notes more effectively and streamline the process by getting you to weed out the extraneous matter and concentrate on what is important.
Click here to watch the video
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John Carlton: How To Prepare Your Sweet Little Sales Message To Survive and Thrive In The Harsh Reality of Modern Markets
All your plans and high-end technologies and cash-dense marketing won’t do squat for you… if you ignore the fundamentals of good salesmanship. Thus, some essential “Step One” advice from a grizzled old-school professional can transform the way you launch any project or career. John Carlton (“The most ripped-off writer on the Web and the most respected copywriting teacher alive.”) stocks your tool kit with
- essential street psychology…
- old-school salesmanship tactics…
- and the high-end skill sets for tweaking interest, persuading and closing the modern ADHD-addled, trust-damaged, skeptical prospect.
Watch this video before you turn your sales message loose so it doesn’t have to fend for itself
Click here to watch the video
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Harlan Kilstein: How to Generate Mega Traffic… Without SEO, Paid Ads, or Black Hat Shenanigans
Over the past couple of years, Harlan has been developing and perfecting a method of creating blogs that become authority sites and get huge amounts of organic traffic without relying on the vagaries of Google’s algorithms.
He employs some very basic and timeless methods, using content generated by both his team and outside contributors. He has had to upgrade his servers twice because they just haven’t been able to handle the traffic his sites generate.
What a wonderful problem to have!
Harlan spills the beans here. Listen, learn and profit.
Click here to watch the video
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Mike Koenigs: Cross-Channel Marketing – From One Channel to Six Channels in Six Weeks
Mike Koenigs, the CEO and Founder of Traffic Geyser and Instant Customer, leaves his standard presentations on marketing technologies at the office… and give us something new and unique.
He explained how to get your message out in as many places as possible and in as many formats as possible…so your customers can consume it in whatever format (written, audio, vidoe) they prefer.
He also explained his favorite method of creating many prospect-sucking videos (the 10x10x4), his “crowd capture”…
…as well as several of his favorite closing methods:
- The “Mobile Convenience” close,
- The “Open the Box Desire” close, and
- The “Risk-Free Combo” close
As well as a ninja trick for optimizing your email open rates…
There are a lot of cutting-edge strategies from someone who lives “new media”.
Click here to watch the video
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Bond Halbert: The Online A-Pile / B-Pile Speech (How to Get Your Emails Opened & Read)
Updating the principles in his father’s now world famous A-Pile / B-Pile Speech, Bond Halbert shows you exactly how he consistently gets email open rates way beyond the industry standard. Whether you are a professional wordsmith or flunked English class… you will be able to boost your email marketing profits using these simple tactics starting with the first email you send after watching this presentation.
In this video you will learn:
- How to get direct mail into the A-pile.
- How to get past the Spam Filter
- How to get an a-pile email address
- How to get your email opened
- What is the best subject line of all
- How to create a compelling subject line every time
- How to time your offers
- How to avoid the online version of the “oh, yuck” factor
Click here to watch the video
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 Action Seminar 3 – Copy Court
Here’s how this works: We selected a handful of submitted websites and manuscripts from attendees… and unleashed our Simple Writing System faculty writers on them.
The panel critiques the effectiveness of the copy, points out weak headlines and sales angles… and hits the essentials they normally cover in their super-expensive paid-consultations with clients.
This segment should give some idea what it’s like to get personal attention from top writers…
Click here to watch the video
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Jon Correll: Website Conversion Techniques You Could Learn On Your Own… If You Had 5 Years and $500,000,000 Burning a Hole in Your Pocket
Jon Correll is the co-founder and CEO of Conversion Voodoo. They provide landing page and conversion rate optimization services. Many companies do that.
Conversion Voodoo is somewhat unique in several ways. First, they charge their clients $0 to get started. They only get paid if they increase profits. Client’s profits don’t go up? Conversion Voodoo doesn’t get paid. Second, if your company doesn’t already do many, many, many millions of dollars a year in sales, they won’t work with you. You can try begging. Others have. It doesn’t help.
You will learn:
- where should focus your efforts where you will get the maximum return
- what you must do in order to be sure your testing results are accurate
There is a wealth of information anyone can use..
Click here to watch the video
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Action Seminar 3 – Speaker Q & A Panel
At end of Day 1, we invited the speakers back to the stage and tossed them some of the questions the attendees submitted before the event.
Some of the issues they addressed:
- John Walker (from Product Launch Formula) talks about product launches in the current market
- How to find the right people for any job, manage them and how and when to pay them, even if they are on the other side of the world
- How to use a KOLBE test (and what a KOLBE test is)
- How to get clients to actually run your stuff
BTW,,,one of the panelists is looking to hire people (at the time of the seminar, anyway)
Click here to watch the video
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Brian Johnson: Really Big (I’m Talking HUGE) Marketing Mistakes. How to Repeat Them and How to Avoid Them. It’s All Up to You
Brian advises some of the largest companies in the world to improve their profitability and overall performance.
He discusses, among other things:
- Business cycles, and what should take place within each cycle for the business to succeed
- Planning: how to create bridges from where you are to where you want to go
- Vision and Values: How to use them ethically to move the business forward
- Meetings and Rhythms: How to plan meetings that are effective
- Hiring: The processes he uses to isolate the best candidate for any job
- The proper way to do split testing
- How to maximize the attendance and conversion at webinars
- and much more…
Million dollar advice for any business person.
Click here to watch the video
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John Paul Mendocha: Google is a slot machine and Facebook is like counting cards in Blackjack
John Paul Mendocha came to Internet Marketing 11 years ago, having already established himself as top sales rep (helped taking one company all the way to a Top 20 spot on the INC 500 list) and an acknowledged business turn-around expert.
He’s spent the last 3 years working as the Director of Sales for Perry Marshall (of AdWords and Facebook advertising fame), building sales funnels for Perry’s business and many of Perry’s top clients.
In this exclusive talk, John Paul talks about the mindset you need in order to be a successful Google Adwords and Facebook ads consultant
He discusses:
- the differences between Google and Facebook
- the best way to be successful at Google and Facebook advertising (they are completely different)
- the language to use with prospects and clients
- his favorite book about strategy
You haven’t heard this perspective anywhere else…
Click here to watch the video
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Ben Morris: Big Data for the Little Guy
Ben Morris supplies data to some of the largest companies in the world. Most companies only use demographics: age, income, #children, neighborhood, etc.
Ben combines that with psychographic data: How much discretionary income, heavy transactors, technoadoption, urbanicity, lifestyle Clusters to create a more complete profile. He can tell how likely the customer is to buy so his clients can segment their lists better and concentrate their efforts on the big buyers.
The service he provides is for companies who are a bit more sophisticated than the average entrepreneur, but the information is understandable and should be fascinating to anyone interested in learning how to target their message better.
Click here to watch the video
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Kevin Rogers: How to Convert Skeptical Visitors into Raving Fans in 60 Seconds or Less
Kevin Rogers is a stand-up comic-turned-copywriter. He is one of the Simple Writing System instructors and a member of our inner circle.
He explains a simple yet effective method for creating a hook, using the basic elements of a story.
Telling stories is the best way to get your prospects to know, like and trust you enough to want to do business with you.
This is an entertaining and informative presentation from a professional performer…
Click on here to watch the video
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Pete Hudson: Visual WordPress
Pete Hudson is our go-to-guy for wordpress and website design. He not only is an expert in website development, he “gets” marketing as well. This is a rare combination.
In this presentation he shows us what good design looks like and offers some tools to use to put up good looking websites fast that convert well.
Some of the areas he covers:
- The use of fonts…as logos as well as for headlines and content
- His favorite themes for websites and membership sites
- How to use color to express the mood of your site, and how to find complementary colors easily
- Nuts and bolts of good design…font size, alignment, use of white space, script, images,
- and much more…
Pete knows his stuff and is able to explain it in a manner that even the most non-techie among us will understand. But, there is a lot of great information for those more sophisticated, as well.
Click here to watch the video
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Action Seminar 3: Hot Seats 1
This is the first set of hot seats. I start with a review of the ground rules, then we get right in to the hot seats.
Mitch Tarr:
Mitch runs an email marketing service. Virginia interviewed him about email marketing in February, the audio is here.
His prospects call him, and he is the one that does the closing and then is the project manager.
They discuss some ways he can start to divest himself of part of his work load, and how he can exchange information with other business owners to help him as his business grows.
Jack Gordon:
Jack works with law firms, collection agencies, creditors to track litigation against them and isolate those plaintiffs who are involved in multiple lawsuits. This represents about a third of all lawsuits.
He has a database of people who are likely to sue. He makes this information available to his clients so they don’t take work from those people.
He has about 10% of the market, and a client is worth about $1800/year
Stan suggests some different ways to reach new prospects, and John addresses the problem of getting past the gatekeeper.
Beate:
Beate is a consultant who helps women establish work/life balance and have a great career to reduce the stress they are under. She is a member of our Platinum Mastermind group and is looking for some input from the audience.
She has a test that the prospects can take.
She is trying to find a hook to attract clients, because she has a broad service.
Click here to watch the video
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Action Seminar 3 – Hot Seats 2
This is the second set of hot seats.
Andrea Wieland
Her company is E1 fit: An online fitness, nutrition, mental training plans website. The market she wants to discuss here are student athletes who want to play college sports.
They have just started marketing the program.
Her first question is who to target? Student, parent, coach. The students are the ones that get the value, but parents are the ones with the money. The coach has a lot of say in whether they would be interested in this program or not.
She wants to go through clubs with an affiliate program. they market through the coaches. Stan explains the difficulties of dealing with clubs as affiliates.
John tells her to simplify her sales process. He has a bodybuilding client that uses direct mail successfully. They talk about how to target a direct mail campaign.
Click here to watch the video
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Action Seminar 3 – Hot Seats 3
This is the third set of hot seats.
Kamron Karington:
Kamron owned a pizza store and started helping other pizza owners market their businesses.
He does email marketing. He sends the right message to the right person at the right time based on their buying habits.
He has 7 services. Is this confusing?
John talks about using the language the prospect understands and breaking down his sales process to determine how the conversation has to go.
They talk about different methods of presenting the service to the client. Who keeps the data? What is the pain of canceling his service?
He needs to find one “piece of magic” that will hook the client, then mention the other services.
Jeremy Jenkins:
Jeremy’s family runs an heirloom seed company. There are 2 main businesses: A site that targets “preppers” (Survivalists who are preparing for the end of the world) and a regular heirloom seed company.
They discuss:
- using different sites targeted to different markets.
- learning the language of each market, especially one like the preppers, who use terms that most people would not understand at all.
- how to sell using direct response
John also suggests that he use a “treasure map”
Click here to watch the video
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Action Seminar 3 — Wrap-up and Platinum Mastermind
John Carlton, Stan Dahl, and some of Platinum MasterMind Group members explain how the group works and share some of their personal experiences and successes.
To get more information about our Platinum Mastermind Group, and to apply for membership, please go to www.CarltonCoaching.com/platinum-mastermind.html