THE TEN THINGS YOU MUST TO BECOME
A MILLIONAIRE SELLING SERVICES
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
The easy money days of the 'eighties are already remotest
history. We denizens of the 'nineties are going to read a
lot fewer stories about no brainer millionaires, guys who
bought properties for pennies one morning and sold them for
a windfall after lunch. Although the trend isn't entirely
clear yet, we're probably entering a deflationary cycle
where, as they say in those brokerage ads, the only way to
make money is the old fashioned way, to earn it! Is this a
cause for alarm? No way! If you're willing to follow a few
simple, easy-to-understand steps you'll find that making
real money in the 'nineties is not so difficult after all...
and that your prospects for becoming a millionaire -- a real
millionaire and not one whose wealth evaporates when the
property market declines -- are very good, indeed.
Desire: The First Prerequisite
Being in the business I'm in, it'll be no surprise to you to
learn that I come in contact with literally thousands of
people who all tell me, one way and another, they want to
get rich. Frankly, I've long ceased to believe most of them.
Most people, whatever they say to the contrary, don't have
the one crucial prerequisite they need for success: desire.
Oh, sure, they'd like to be rich... they'd like all the
benefits of being rich. But being rich isn't a priority with
them.
You know the type I mean. They tell you things like "Don't
sweat it"; "Money isn't everything"; "Sure I want to be
rich, but there's more to life than money, you know" and all
the other things that allow them to justify their present --
and chronic -- lack of financial success. I've never once in
my life met a person who earned his money who's ever said
anything as fatuous as these lines, and I've never met a
person who's said them who wasn't relatively disadvantaged,
generally scraping the bottom of the barrel.
The first thing you've got to do if you're going to become a
millionaire selling your service is search your soul. Do you
really desire the money? Which means do you desire it
sufficiently so that you're willing to do all the work that
is necessary to make it? If not, no plan is going to help
you because you don't have the ardor it takes to achieve
success. You know yourself willing to make do with less...
you'll accept the less good house, the less comfortable
lifestyle, the uncertainly of living without resources you
can tap. If this is acceptable to you, so be it. But you're
never going to be rich.
#2 Commit Yourself
If, however, you really desire the money -- for whatever
reason; to create a certain and comfortable lifestyle for
yourself and your family; to have the best health care when
you need it; to travel in style when you wish to do so; to
enjoy the security of prosperity and ampleness, you're ready
to move on to Step #2, commitment.
The millionaires I know, including myself, are COMMITTED. We
not only desire wealth, we are committed to achieving it.
And how are we committed? First, in writing. When you begin
your wealth quest, write down just how much money you want
and just when you want to achieve it. These statistics, of
course, will mean nothing until you finish the rest of the
exercise outlined in this report; they're just estimates.
But even though they'll probably have to be redone, write
down something now.
Once you've written down the amount and the destination
date, draft a contract with yourself. Say, "I promise myself
that on (date), I will have at least $1,000,000 in real net
worth." Now sign this contract and date it. Put a copy in
your wallet where you can see it daily. Post another copy
where you're sure to see it every day... on the refrigerator
door... on the bathroom mirror. And then if you're working
for something specific -- like a new house... or college
educations for your children... post pictures of what you
want. This is called Imaging, and it is another way of
helping you to remember and reinforce what you want.
Or consider posting a Million Dollar Bill so you can see it
every day. These bills look and feel like real money and
provide just the right note of authenticity. They help you
feel that the objective is real... and give you constant
inspiration towards reaching your target. (Details about
getting one follow in the Resource Box.)
#3 Find Out How Much Business You Must Really Do To Reach
Your Objective
If you're going to become a millionaire selling services,
you're going to have to sell a lot more than a million
dollars worth of your service units. As every child knows,
it takes money to make money. The question, however, is how
much does it take?
Almost without exception, service sellers who are relatively
disadvantaged and likely to stay that way can't tell you how
much business they've got to do to become a millionaire.
Future millionaires can. They know just how much business
they've got to do over what stretch of time so they can
reach their objective. They're not working to 1) make ends
meet or 2) get through the day; they're working to get rich.
They're exchanging portions of their life and units of their
service for the consideration that will, in some defined
period of time, make them rich.
Finding out how much business you're going to have to do to
reach your objective is not difficult. Basically you've got
to look at two key variables: the cost of your overhead,
including service cost, and the cost of your marketing.
These expenses must be deducted from the cost of the service
you sell; the remainder is your profit, or capital.
Take a piece of paper and divide it in two. On the left hand
side list your overhead expenses for one year, including
rent, utilities, telephone, heat, office supplies,
insurance, etc., etc. Do not add a salary category, unless
you have personnel costs for others besides yourself. One of
the first barriers you must break through is considering
yourself a salaried employee. People who work for salaries,
even if they pay that salary, never get rich. You should be
considering how much real money you'll make, not how much
salary you'll be bringing home.
Second, figure your marketing expenses for the next year.
This necessarily entails developing a marketing plan. Just
how you develop that plan is beyond the bounds of this
report, but if you consult my book MONEY MAKING MARKETING:
FINDING THE PEOPLE WHO NEED WHAT YOU'RE SELLING AND MAKING
SURE THEY BUY IT ($39.50 postpaid), you'll be able to
develop a suitable marketing plan... and figure out how much
it costs.
Once you know your costs, it's time to figure out how many
units of service you'll have to sell to meet not only these
costs but your profit objectives. Say you've decided to
become a millionaire in ten years. Say that it costs you
$40,000 a year to run your business and that your service
sells for $1000 and takes 20 hours to implement. Say that
after reviewing your investment objectives (below) you
figure you need to invest $60,000 a year to reach your
millionaire goal. Say it takes you another $40,000 a year to
maintain your current lifestyle. To reach this objective,
you must work at least 54 hours ®MDUL¯every week of the
year®MDNM¯. There can be no holidays... no time off... no
sick days... no lag time... no down periods between
assignments. Given the current way you do business, you may
well decide this is an impossibility... and begin to think
of how to run your business so that you can plausibly reach
your goal.
While the knowledge that reaching your overall objective in
a decade doing business the way you're doing it now is very
likely an impossibility may initially depress you, it
shouldn't. Making money always necessitates a system. If the
system you have now isn't going to work for you, it's high
time you knew it... so you can make the necessary
adjustments. This knowledge is the necessary root of
invention.
#4 Assess Your Market & Your Competition
Once you know what it costs to do business and how many
units of your service you need to sell to reach your
objective, it's time to assess the people who are going to
make you rich: your future customers and your competitors. I
hear a lot of nonsense about so-and-so being a "self made
man". Let me tell you something: no one is a self man man or
woman. Everyone becomes rich because of other people. Always
and everywhere. I don't care if you inherit the money... or
head the operation that makes it. Other people always make
one rich. But who these "other people" are is insufficiently
understood. It's the combination of customers
and competitors who make you rich.
-- Customers
To rich millionaire status, you must sell your service (or,
better, the benefit you offer) to a sufficient number of
customers in a designated period of time. You must design
your business territory sufficiently broadly so that you're
bringing your benefits to the attention of the greatest
number of people who, responding to your marketing, can
easily be served by you. When you begin, you'll necessarily
be uncertain about just how broad your reach can and should
be. But by experimenting you'll learn.
-- Competitors
While every resource on selling services focuses on getting
customers, virtually none deal with the other necessary
aspect of getting rich, namely understanding and
outpositioning competitors, yet this is crucial.
If you want to get rich faster, you must understand and
outposition your competitors. You must seek to understand
why they are making money (or failing to make money), what
kind of market they seek, how they approach it, what
benefits they offer, how much they charge, etc. No one
should ever go into business who isn't willing to spend the
necessary time and resources thoroughly reviewing their
competitors.
Why? You want to see what works about their operation (and
what doesn't)... and see how you can position yourself
before your customers in such a way that your service is
seen as an undeniable improvement on what is currently
available... even if your cost is higher! This means
spending time thinking through alternatives that will
improve your service and enable you to market it as an
enhanced value. Are your competitors closed week-ends? Don't
they pick up and deliver? Don't they offer customers the
possibility of paying by credit cards? Be glad! Their
omissions have given you the means of demolishing their
business.
#5 Understand The Anxieties And Aspirations Of Your Market
One of the main reasons why service sellers stay poor is
because they focus their attention on what they offer...
rather than on the anxieties and aspirations of their
customers. Service sellers, so often trained in specialized
techniques, are often dazzled by their own brilliance...
rather than focusing on the wants and needs of their
prospects. This is supremely fatuous. The brilliance and
technical dexterity of the service seller is valuable only
insofar as it enables you to give the prospect what he
wants. In its own right it counts for nothing.
Thus, to help yourself reach millionaire status quicker,
probe the condition of your prospects. What do they want?
What are they afraid of? The more you know about this, the
better, because these data become the basis for all your
marketing documents.
And how, pray, do you discover this information? Easy! Read
professional publications, review technical papers, gather
survey data, solicit others in the field for their
opinions... and, most of all, ask your customers. They'll
tell you how they feel. And the extent to which they open up
to you, because of your empathetic concern, is the extent to
which you can target all your marketing to entice others
like them to profit from the benefits of your service.
#6 Develop Client-Centered Marketing Documents
Recently, I wrote some yellow pages ad copy for a community
health organization. At my request they brought a heap of
their own prior ads and the ads of their competitors. These
ads were an alphabet soup of professional designations of
the personnel at the various agencies. A person who needed a
nurse, but wasn't a trained health professional, would look
at these ads in bewilderment, unable to understand the copy,
much less differentiate between agencies. This is typical of
professional marketing today where the copy focuses on the
copy writer... not the most important person of all, the
eventual customer. THIS IS STUPID! What the prospect reading
the ads wanted was a nurse. Therefore, I headed their ads
"Call Us... Your Nurse Is Ready For You!" And phone
inquiries immediately started setting records... and
continue to do so. In short, give people what they want and
don't ask them to spend time figuring out what you've got.
Everything you write has got to be about the client... about
what he wants to achieve... about his pains... his
objectives. Remember these magic words, "Don't sell...
Solve!" While you'll have to read my book CASH COPY: HOW TO
OFFER YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SO YOUR PROSPECTS BUY
THEM... NOW! ($28.95 postpaid) to fully master this
important subject, right now you can improve your response
by focusing all your marketing communications on these four
words: "You get benefit now."
#7 Perfect A System That Produces A Steady Stream Of
Prospects
Most service business market episodically. They'll do it for
a while and then, business going reasonably well, they'll
stop marketing. This is madness. You must work to create a
marketing system that produces a never ending stream of
clients. I've done this so conscientiously that I get a
phone call in my office every 7 minutes on average. That
means that every 7 minutes someone is calling up who is in
effect saying, "You've touched me. You've convinced me, at
least in a preliminary way, that you can solve a problem I
have... that you can help me. In return for your help I want
to pay you. Just convince me you can help." This systems
means I don't have to make cold calls... don't have to put
myself in a subservient or dependent position vis a vis my
prospects. When they call they're telling me in no uncertain
terms that they have a problem that they think I can
solve... or want a benefit they think I can give them. Then
it's up to me to close the deal.
Creating this kind of system means work. You need to
explore:
. direct mail
. card decks
. classified and small space ads
. free publicity
. networking
. workshops and seminars, etc.
You should be mastering all the available marketing
techniques that get you leads... you should be running tests
in each technique. You have to keep good records of costs
and return, both in terms of prospects generated and deals
clinched. This all takes time. But what you're looking for
are the most productive (read "least expensive") marketing
alternatives.
Now let me tell you something: take the time to understand
how each of these techniques work. Each has secrets and each
must be studied. Don't be arrogant about marketing. Stay
curious and open minded. Just recently a well known figure
in direct marketing wanted to run a card in my card deck. He
told me he'd always had bad responses to his cards but that
he wanted to try my deck. Knowing him to be an expert, I
allowed him to run just the card he wanted, although I knew
it to be weak and unfocused. He was an expert, I reasoned,
and besides he was gruff and unwelcoming of advice. The card
ran... and his card returned the worst results in the deck.
People who were new to card decks, but who had taken my
advice, pulled many times what his ad did... although he had
the basis for a good offer.
When I called to discuss the ad with him and why it had
pulled so badly and to share the results of others, he was
withering in his comments about all card decks. He didn't
want to listen. He wasn't willing to be educated. He knew
everything. The truth was that his ego was blocking
understanding. As a result, he's lost a very powerful
advertising medium... and I've lost a potential customer.
All because he thinks he "knows."
The basis of marketing is motivating people. The means of
motivation change. Techniques change. Suitable means change.
You've got to be willing to change too... or you'll make as
many costly and entirely avoidable mistakes as my know-it-
all friend who at sixty-something has become a veritable
fossil.
#8 Convert Your Prospects Quickly
It's astonishing to me just how slow most service sellers
are about converting prospects and how unimaginative. When a
person sends you a card... or returns a coupon... or calls
and asks for information, he's interested. Right that
minute. So, start closing -- right that minute. Don't wait.
Ask questions like these:
-- "Are you ready to get started enjoying (the benefit
you're marketing)?"
-- "I can get started helping you (today? tomorrow? next
Thursday?). Is that good for you."
-- "What will it take to get you to get started now?"
-- "How badly do you want to achieve (benefit you're
offering)?"
In short, qualify and push ahead. Find out their level of
seriousness... and their desire to start now. Or, as we say,
"cut to the chase."
If the person is just looking, you need to know and
prioritize them accordingly. If the prospect is ready to
act, you need to know that, too. Don't treat them both the
same. They don't deserve it. People who aren't ready now
shouldn't get the same treatment... the same consideration
as those who are. Remember, you're running a marketing
system, not a charity bazaar. You need to generate a certain
number of prospects to reach your objective... you need to
convert a certain number of these to become clients in a
given period to reach your objective. Giving the customers
what they want is important... reaching your objective is
important. But catering to prospects who haven't the desire
or the resources to get what they want and enjoy your
benefits isn't important. Tell them what you'll do... tell
them what they need to do. Then go on to more qualified
prospects without a backward glance.
#9 Diversify
A few months ago I got a call from a copywriter who was
desperate for business. He was really strapped for cash, and
it took an effort on my part to get him to take a card in my
card deck. I knew he'd do well, get flooded with prospects.
He didn't know and initially he balked. But with my help, he
produced a card that generated over 350 leads in 5 weeks,
enough leads to keep a copywriter in business for years.
First he tried to handle all the leads himself. But he
recognized that was futile; with leads coming in daily, he'd
never catch up. After all, each lead represented someone who
wanted a brochure, ad, cover letter, marketing program, or
more... and these couldn't be completed at the rate of even
one a day.
Finally, at a moment of desperation about all the leads he
was wasting, a lightbulb went on in his head: he would make
money faster by diversifying, by bringing in more
copywriters to handle the leads he got and by focusing on
keeping more leads coming. At this moment, he recognized a
fundamental truth about becoming a millionaire: you'll get
there faster if you don't do it all on your own. As a
result, he started recruiting other copywriters and started
farming out the business, taking a percentage from each,
while keeping a good fraction of the most lucrative accounts
for himself. Net result? After saying a couple months ago he
didn't need any more leads, he promptly bought another
100,000 cards from me to keep his flow of leads -- and cash
-- going. Smart!
Thus, to become a millionaire faster:
- stop doing all the service work yourself and organize
others who do the same and related things; take a percentage
of their earnings and handle the marketing and
administration, and/or
- take the problem-solving information at your disposal and
create products like audio and video cassettes, booklets,
Special Reports and books so you can expand into the
national or even international marketplace.
Unfortunately, most service sellers don't really understand
this proposition. They come early to the conclusion that
they can't do everything themselves. But they don't make the
determination to focus on marketing and administration
rather than direct service delivery. It is only by keeping
your lead generation system working properly, by continually
generating new leads, that you can afford to bring in others
from whom you can take a percentage of their sales. If there
are no sales, bringing in other people is a disastrous
miscalculation but if you can keep the stream of qualified
leads coming, you'll make far more money if you don't do all
the work yourself.
#10 Invest
Whatever you're doing, no matter how successfully you're
doing it, you're getting older and running out of steam.
That's life. Prepare for it. That's why you should be
investing.
Look upon investment this way. You're given so many bright
ideas in your life... and so many natural resources
including health, stamina, energy, etc. This is your natural
capital. You can either expend it willy-nilly. Or you can
use it to generate the financial capital that becomes the
basis for both your investment program and your eventual
security.
Personally, I'm an investment fanatic. I invest money every
single day of my life and have been doing this for years
with significant results. From the very beginning, I never
expected my natural resources to last forever... and neither
should you.
Arrange your marketing program so that you can comfortably
invest at least 10% of your gross receipts yearly. Yes, this
is a lot. Yes, at the beginning it will mean sacrifice. But
without sacrifice you cannot generate capital and without
capital you will never really have security. That's why
creating an investment program is a necessarily component of
any marketing program and deserves equal attention to your
marketing plan.
Conclusion
The number of service sellers continues to grow in this
country. But most are fated for oblivion. Too many will
simply get by, nothing more. And their lives will be
impoverished in innumerable ways because of it. America is a
capitalist nation. Those with capital have always ruled it.
Those without have always suffered. Never has this been more
true than now. So decide. Is living in relative want good
enough for you and your family? Are you resigned to
accepting second best, comfortable in your disadvantaged
lot? If you want more, follow these directions. My
prediction is that far more real millionaires will be
created in the 'nineties than the 'eighties. And those
created in the service sector will prosper by following
these guidelines.
*************************************************
Dr. Jeffrey Lant is one of the nation's best known
marketers. A millionaire himself, Jeffrey can help you
become rich if you follow the directions in his books MONEY
TALKS: THE COMPLETE GUIDE FOR CREATING A PROFITABLE WORKSHOP
OR SEMINAR IN ANY FIELD (303 pages, $35 postpaid); HOW TO
MAKE AT LEAST $100,000 EVERY YEAR AS A SUCCESSFUL CONSULTANT
IN YOUR OWN FIELD (315 pages, $38.50); and MONEY MAKING
MARKETING: HOW TO OFFER YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SO YOUR
PROSPECTS BUY THEM NOW. (285 pages, $39.50). If you'd like
the $1,000,000 bill, it's available for $12 postpaid. Get
everything -- and a free year's subscription to this
quarterly business resources guide -- from The Sure-Fire
Business Success Catalog, 50 Follen St., Suite 507,
Cambridge, MA 02138 or with MC/VISA from (617) 547-6372. Ask
for free details on Jeffrey's card-deck, reaching 100,000
business prospects for the lowest prices in the entire
industry!