There has never been any argument in advertising circles that the most effective business advertising is word-of-mouth advertising.

That’s why direct selling is so dramatically successful as a method of marketing every imaginable product and service, and why direct selling is such a great business in which to be. As a direct salesperson conversationally telling another person why you like a particular product, you are much more convincing advertisement than any TV commercial or magazine ad.

The tremendous persuasiveness of your personal endorsement of a product is what word-of-mouth advertising is all about. Much to the chagrin of professional ad agencies, such word-of-mouth advertising cannot be purchased. But you, as a direct salesperson, can put this special type of advertising power to work for your business.

Because you are fortunate to be on friendly, personal terms with your customers, you can enlist their aid in promoting your services. You can actually turn your present customers into a personal advertising department. All you need to do is master the right way to ask for their help.

Develop Personal Relations

If you learn how to properly ask for their help, your customers will enthusiastically go to work advertising your business. This will help promote your services, lead you to scores of new services, and give you all the valuable benefits of word-of-mouth advertising. There are two types:

1. The customer actually becomes an advertising agent and tells others about you and the service you provide.
2. The customer gives you referrals to people who may be good prospects and allows you to use their name as an endorsement.

Either type can be extremely valuable in multiplying your customer list.

Avoid Pressure

The most important thing to remember is that this kind of help cannot be bought from your customers. It must never seem like you are offering a bribe in exchange for a list of names. As a rule, people will not “sell” their friends to you. Offering an “inducement” also might raise doubts about the quality of your services. If they are as good as you say they are, why should you bribe people for their recommendations?

Remember two very important things about human nature: first, people usually enjoy telling others about products they try and like. Second, people like to be appreciated. One way they get appreciated is by being helpful to others.

In short, offer an incentive for help without appearing to be paying for it.

Show Appreciation

In this way, you’re thanking the person, not bribing them. They’ll be pleased, won’t feel guilty, and will be more willing the next time you ask.

The next time you call on that customer you should remember to again thank them for their help. Report to them on the reactions of the prospects they suggested. Let the person you know you did call on them, that Mrs. Jones did become a customer and purchased such and such, and that Mrs. Walters was interested but wished to purchase at a later date.

In many cases, after reporting these results, you can obtain a couple of additional prospects from them.

Prospects are the lifeblood of your business. Your greatest asset in direct sales is your inventory of prospective new customers. And there is no better way to maintain that inventory, converting prospects to customers, than by using the power of word-of-mouth advertising …with recommendations from your present, satisfied customers. Put this power to work now and watch your profits and your list of customers multiply.

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series, and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit: www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

“Worriers and spellers can be hired for minimum wage.” – James Tolleson

I won a couple “spelling bees” when I was a kid, and I’m a reasonably bright guy. But unless you’re going to teach English lit, it turns out that mastery of grammar and spelling is not particularly important to most careers or businesses. I get letters from time to time offering to edit everything from my books and newsletters to my sales letters, to correct the grammar and syntax or present a more erudite, professional image-but these letters always come from people who have never had a book published or never made any serious money from creating advertising.

You CAN hire these folks for minimum wage all day long. Most of the highest income earners I know have a few of these people around. The point, of course, is that “perfection” and “professionalism” as defined and perceived by most people has not one darned thing to do with making a lot of money. It turns out that book publishers all have editors who can fix what you write – what they need is somebody who can come up with salable books and then sell them. Ad agencies can hire people to fix grammar easily; what’s hard to find is the guy who can come up with something like “They All Laughed When I sat Down At The Piano…” that can actually sell something.

See, when you have the ability to cause people to jump up and part with their money, you can hire – or the world will ante up and provide – people to run around behind you and do everything from fix your grammar to get your laundry cleaned to mollifying hotel managers after you’ve trashed the penthouse suite. This tells you the one and only business skill worth focusing on, worth mastering. And I can’t tell you how happy I am to have had that revelation early in life.

As an aside, if you really want to do your son or daughter a favor, push them into summer jobs in selling. Even if they want to become doctors or, God forbid, lawyers later, the most valuable part of their entire education will be the three months spent selling in the store, car dealership or door to door. (Some years back, I did a survey of 100 chiropractors with practices earning at least $500,000.00 a year; over 80 of them had worked in direct sales, like selling vacuum cleaners, fire alarms, cookware, etc.)

Similarly, you can also hire a bunch of pinheads and bean counters to sit around and worry over every imaginable detail and potential problem for a whole lot less than you can make from the same time selling or causing sales. In essence, it really doesn’t pay to worry! Hard to break the worry habit: most of us are taught this habit by our parents and have it deeply imprinted in our subconscious.

The best antidote or, at least distraction though is positive, productive, proactive action. I do know one entrepreneur who actually hired a guy to worry for him – he pays him $35,000.00 a year. Every morning he gives his Vice-President of Worrying a list of stuff to worry about, and then he goes on to focus on selling and causing sales. This pretty much tells you the only two functions of business worth investing your time and energy in. And note this: everybody who takes your time or attention away from those two things is your enemy.

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series, and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit: www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

Just the other day, I was listening to a recording of a speech by Joe Sugarman* and Joe said, “One good path to success is to learn all the proven rules and meticulously follow them. Another path is to occasionally break all the rules, because breakthroughs come only from breaking rules.” Resonates with me; as you know, I wrote a whole book based on breaking rules.

On one hand, I’m cautious about innovation; pioneers usually come home full of arrow; it’s often costly and time consuming…and I am always much more interested in “what works” than a new idea. However, as Joe said, OCCASIONALLY, or I might say, at carefully chosen time, you have no alternative but to be the pioneer in order to move forward and in order to stand out from the crowd. It is, of course, the minority of times that you successfully innovate that you get noticed for, not the majority of times you successfully follow an already plowed path.

(*In case you don’t know, Joe Sugarman is a mail-order pioneer: first to sell electronic calculators via direct-response ads, first to use 800#’s. You may know him via his infomercials or QVC appearances for Blu-Blockers. But his JS&A ads and catalogs preceded The Sharper Image and led in selling various electronic gadgets.)

I think the best times to innovate are when you are absolutely convinced that the conventional wisdom; the already plowed path; the crowd is wrong. Just as an example, when I was getting started in the speaking business, everybody seemed to operate under the policy of billing clients for fees and expenses after their engagements (anything else was viewed as impolite and unprofessional), and most speakers who sold product from the platform sort of begged the clients for permission, and often sacrificed that opportunity.

Very early on, I determined that being in the banking and collections business did not serve my purposes very well at all – nor did speaking only for wages. So I insisted on a 50% fee deposit to take a date off the calendar, balance and travel expenses paid on site at the speech, and I refused dates where I could not also offer my materials. At the time, peers criticized me; told companies would never accept such terms; and called ‘unethical’ by agents and bureaus. Today, my payment policies are the norm in the profession.

Another example: at a time when every vendor in a particular niche was offering only very expensive services requiring long-term contracts, I copied their marketing method but used it to sell a substitute product at a very small price (and quickly took in a couple million dollars) – I was convinced they were idiotically leaving a lot of motived but unsatisfied customers behind by not offering a low price option.

An interesting survey of selected, successful, profitable large corporations turned up 74% that said they’d achieve their first big success with either a unique product or a distinctive way of doing business, although this breakthrough may not have come along until they had been in business for many years. Note the word: first. I also know many companies that are able to subsequently build on that first breakthrough more conservatively, to grow and stabilize their businesses.

The bottom-line, I guess, is that you gotta gamble. You try to gamble only when you must OR when circumstances look so favorable that it is irresistible, but you got gamble.

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series, and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit: www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com