Adam Street's Blog
The spiritual and practical path to freedom to do your art

Sales Fast Food

Back when I sold insurance I made most of my sales from Internet leads.  After a while I received referrals too but my bread and butter was the online ones.

If I could beat the rate the prospect was paying (and the other quotes) I usually got the sell.  I was an independent agent so I had access to more than one company.

When I swung into working with car lots, I thought I hit the holy grail.  People who didn’t have insurance who needed it to buy their new cars.  It was a match made in heaven.

It wasn’t all rosy though.  There was a price for eating all that insurance sales “fast food”. 

When car salesmen needed quotes they wanted them with swiftness of Flash (from the CW TV show).  If you didn’t call them back in minutes they rolled on to the next insurance guy.

Even when I sold the policy things could get sketchy.  Sometimes financing wouldn’t workout and the policy would cancel in a few weeks.  Or the customer would leave in 6 months and go with another company.

And don’t get me wrong… Sales fast-food It’s not just for the insurance industry.  Business owners and entrepreneurs do it everyday.

They focus on going wide instead of going deep.  

I used to buy lists and I was really good with cold traffic.  Even though I made sales it wasn’t the same.  No matter how enchanting  my words were, I mainly attracted people who  shopped on price.  

In the end it was sales fast food all over again.  I could have built the relationship later after I provided the service but I was so into churn-and-burn that I just kept looking for the next dopamine hit.

That’s why it’s so important to “eat your veggies” and build your business the slow way.  My Blockbuster Marketing process may take you longer but you’ll have a more sustainable business and you’ll connect with your prospects and clients.

Like real fast food limit the amount you consume.  Too much of it can make your business feeble and flabby.

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Adam

What Claude Hopkins has in common with Costco

I’ve been married for over 20 years and apparently I have date night all wrong.  

My wife needs to forget movies, concerts, and snazzy restaurants.  We’re going to Costco, baby!

Penn (of Penn and Teller) used to take dates to Costco.  https://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/201003?search_term=&pg=79#pg79

It could be the beauty of concrete flooring, those cuddly boxes, or perhaps the delicious free samples.  

People love free samples and sampling is a great marketing tool you should swipe and deploy from our good friends at Costco.

A lot of businesses don’t like to give away free samples though  Samples are a great way to find and hook customers.  Even if you’re offering a service.

I harp about not giving away your services too but there’s a difference.  On the surface it may appear the same.  Like bodies of water.  Most of them look great from a distance but when you get close you see all garbage, ick, and debris.  

Offering your services whilly-nilly hoping something can come of it and strategically offering a limited freebie as a marketing device is totally different.  You get different results too.

The company that runs Costco’s free samples said sampling boosted beer sales by 71 percent and frozen pizza by 600 percent.

In My Life in Advertising Claude Hopkins said, “the hardest struggle of my life has been to educate advertisers to the use of samples.  Or trials of some kind.”

And lemme tell ya, it’s a helluva lot easier to ‘close the sale’ too.  

Why?

Because you’re not asking someone to buy you’re asking them to try.

How easy is that?

One word of caution though.  Don’t think you still don’t need an irresistible offer.  In many cases it’s just as hard to get someone to take the free thing as it is the NOT free thing.  So don’t rest on your marketing laurels.

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Adam

Control Not just a Janet Jackson song

Remember that song by Janet Jackson, Control?  It started like this…

“When I was 17 I did what people told me.  Did what my father said, and let my mother mold me.  But that was a long ago I’m in control, never gonna stop…”

Those lyrics are even better if you knew that Jackson grew up with a tyrannical father.  Control resonated with us because so many of us wanted power over our own lives.  

As business owners and entrepreneurs we like control too. I’m a recovering control-freak.  I get it.  

I would write cold emails, and copy for my ads, and sales pages with great words and flashy hooks.  I acted like I was in control but I really wasn’t.  

Gary Bencivenga said, “If you’re talking to a million people at once, each one of those people has the total power to toss your ad, ignore it, run to the fridge—anything he or she would rather do.”

When I got good at copywriting I kept thinking I could out-fox the fox.  I’d keep rewriting ads and posting on social with more flash than substance.  

This is like pro sports teams who keep drafting and signing free agents instead of building up the current players on their roster.  Focusing on flash (and snazzy tactics) is ok but it makes the long game hard to play.

I should have put just as much time focusing on building relationships with the audience I already had.  Sending value and listening if someone was talking.

I can’t control vanity metrics but I can control that stuff.  I can send an email a day.

This week don’t forget about the fundamentals and focusing on what you have control over.

Wanna get good at the fundamentals?  Go to https://adamstreet.net for free daily emails.

Adam

The rarest thing in business and marketing

When I started marketing to the wedding niche I thought it was going to easy.  I didn’t need any cutting-edge ideas because my niche was spelled out for me. 

Um, people getting married…  Bam!  

I just had to find highly-interested and motivated prospects that I could email market to.

I subscribed to several marketer’s lists to learn how.  

I picked up tips here and there but I didn’t have any major epiphanies, other than.…  

How were these peeps boasting such big sales with email?  I could barely get anyone to call or email me back.

I stumbled on Eban Pagan’s work and he told me the term that changed my life.  He said he practiced direct response marketing.  Finally, I learned the term that I needed to research and study.

I was obsessed with figuring out how to send an email or mail a flyer to get people to buy.

I finally got the hang out it.  The good news is technology may change but direct response fundamentals don’t.  What Robert Collier and Claude Hopkins wrote about nearly 100 years ago are still applicable today.  

This morning I read a blog post from the great Ken McCarthy and he said something similar.  McCarthy was the marketer who created Internet marketing as we know it and his System Seminar from 20 years ago is world famous.    

He said his primary message is the same today as it was 20 years ago: “This is direct response advertising. Nothing more. Nothing less.”  

He added something else that you need to arm yourself with.  

“Original ideas”!   He called original ideas “the rarest of all things in business and marketing.”

So you can learn the the principles.  You can learn the fundamentals but if you don’t strive for good original ideas you may still struggle.  

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Adam

Old salads and a 100 degree identity

It was my wife’s birthday on Tuesday and we celebrated by going to Red Lobster.  I’m allergic to shellfish so we don’t go for seafood often.  

We all woofed it down.  Wifey ate everything but her salad.

The next day I was hungry and found myself eye-balling her leftover salad.  Like the saint I am I just decided to eat it.  Why ask for permission?   I know…I’m a real gem, right?

The salad was in good shape but the croutons were kinda soggy from hanging out with lettuce. The moisture rubbed off on them.

So is there a lesson to be learned from an old salad?  

Of course there is! 

It’s a planet-based lesson in the law of association.  My croutons got ‘soft’ from being in the wrong environment and the same thing happens to us.

Jim Rohn used to say you become the average of the five people you hang around with most.  Who you are around, the books you read, the videos you watch—all that stuff matters.  

As ‘The Vid’ slows down and more in-person events take place.  If you feel comfortable… Get out of your house and meet some people. 

Like-minded people.  “Hungry” people.

Ed Mylett puts it this way.  If you are a “seventy-five degree identity, and you associate with people who are “one-hundred forty degree identity” you can’t help but to heat up.”  

When you hang around great people, greatness can’t help but to rub off a little.  

So go to a conference. 

Get in a mastermind.  

Zoom is ok but in-person is better.

Unless you have a fever…then keep your ass at home.

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Adam