Using

lateral techniques to make it work!

The MENTAL MAGIC series of booklets.
To see the rest of these books go to KINDLE on Amazon
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mental magic james coyle

Copyright James F. Coyle 2011

James F. Coyle was the founder and CEO of the AUSTRALIAN MINDPOWER RESEARCH
FOUNDATION and is the author of a brand new book-
BEYOND BELIEF;The Ultimate Mindpower instructional Manual - available
from Amazon worldwide.

He was also the founder and editor of the AUSTRALASIAN LATERAL
THINKING NEWSLETTER which ran for about 12 years.

MAIL AND INTERNET SALES

Mail order is a recognised business method of selling to people over huge
geographical distances and ranges from a home-based “kitchen table” operation
to a vast network such as Readers Digest.
Internet sales are another form of mail order but happen in a different format
much more rapidly.
A number of the world’s largest and most respected mail and internet operators
started out as a one or two person business based from their home. They evolved
a successful marketing strategy which enabled them to make more money than
they were spending and simply “snowballed” on from
there.
These days however, it’s all become a little more sophisticated. The concept of
being able to place a $500 advertisement in a magazine or website and receive
$10,000 worth of orders is generally long gone!
These days you will be lucky to cover the cost of the ad!
But having said this, I’m happy to tell you that there ARE ways to build a mail
order-internet business and show a profit in this current economic environment!

From here on I’ll combine mail and internet sales under the general title of
mail order.

It all comes down to what you want to sell by mail. If it is a common item which
is available at any supermarket then there is obviously no reason for people to
order it through the mail …. unless …..the customer is living in an isolated area
several hundred kilometres from town ….or ….the price is so low that it appeals
to your customers “greed” factor!
It is much easier to pick an item that would be of major benefit or appeal, but is
not available through the normal retail outlets. And there is such a wide range of
new products coming onto the market constantly, that it is pointless for me to try
and isolate which of these might be of interest, so
I’ll assume that since you’re reading this report you already have some product
in mind and are looking for a way to successfully market it by mail.

For a start, there are two aspects of dealing with people by mail or internet.
The first is your initial promotion to contact prospective customers. You don’t
know them and they don’t know you so you’ve got to devise a method of
“finding” each other.
The second is your follow-up promotions to people who now know who you are
- they have already done business with you once!
And this is the secret of profitable mail-order in the current competitive
economy!
You may have to be prepared to lose money in your initial search to find
customers but you will aim at making money on subsequent sales. This is
generally known as residual value.
Most (if not all) new mail order “players” enter the game with the aim of
“making a killing” from their initial advertising promotions. The reality is that
they usually lose money and become discouraged. And very few of them seem to
understand that the profit will come from down the line - from repeat sales!

Mail order is just like any other small business “start-up”. It costs money to
setup and get going before a regular customer base is established. If you start a
small business from scratch most wise people would allow for the likelihood of
losing money for the first 3 months while you are establishing
yourself.

And it is the same for mail order-internet sales!

It is going to cost you money to establish your customer base! And this is the
most important aspect of any mail order business. . . the CUSTOMER BASE!
Let’s suppose that you have latched on to a really interesting “widget” which
costs you $10 each in bulk quantities. It is small, light and easy to post and you
feel it will sell OK through the mail or internet at $40 each. It does not appear to
be available in local shops so it seems that the public will be generally unaware
of it. Theoretically you should be able to make a profit of $30 on each one sold
and thereby become filthy rich virtually overnight! Theoretically!!!!!!

But practically, here is how it will work out. . .

You decide wisely to ‘’test” the market for your widget first instead of lashing
out with $10,000 or more on a fully fledged campaign. So you enthusiastically
place a $500 advert in your local paper or website
telling people about your new widget. . . what it does. . . how great it is, etc. You
offer a money-back guarantee and put your full address and phone number in the
media advert or reasonable contact details on your webpage.

And you ask them to send you $40!

You wait with baited breath for the orders to pour in! You receive 3 phone calls
or several emails from curious people. One of them wants to know if it comes
with a 1000 year strawberry-flavoured warranty ……the other two will “think”
about ordering.

Three orders come in through the mail or the internet over the next few days and
the horrible truth begins to dawn. The whole exercise looks like a total flop!
Over a total of 10 days or so, you have sold a total of 5 widgets. One of the
callers bought two after he’d seen them for himself.
And one of the mail order customers re-ordered another one for his boss!
And the bottom line is this…… you’ve made a net profit of (5x$30) $150 but the
advert cost you $500. Plus there was a small amount for post and packing for the
direct sales.

Now you consider all this very deeply and decide that you probably advertised in
the wrong media. So you take a $500 ad in a different paper or internet site. And
. . . same result!
You’ve ended up with a grand total of 10 customers, of which two have
reordered off you because they like your widget and one of the early clients
bought two off you.
So you have a total of 13 sales at a profit of $30 each. This means you’ve made a
net profit of $390 (less packaging and postage costs) and the whole thing has
cost you $1000 in ads!
So much for getting rich overnight!

You sit down and think about it all for a week and as a last resort decide to place
a small “leader” type ad in the same two newspapers or a small box ad on an
internet site. These cost only $100 each and invite customers to write, phone or
email for more details. You tell them this information is obligation-free and will
cost them nothing!
And over the next week you receive 30 responses! You post or email these
people 2-3 pages of literature about your widget and ask them to send $40 for
one of these marvellous items.
And 6 people send in an order. So you’ve got 6 sales at $30 profit per item
which gives you $180 profit, less your postage and packaging costs for the direct
mail side.
The two adverts have cost you $200, so you are a little out of pocket….. but not
much!
So with this leader style of advertising you’ve nearly broken even but don’t quite
know what to do next.

Ideally you’re looking to build a business that generates sales of $5-10,000 per
week but you’ve got to find a successful promotional formula first. So far
nobody has asked for their money back and a couple of people have even re-
ordered.
So the product is obviously a good one! You decide to send a letter and an email
out to all those who bought a widget telling them that as it was so popular
you’ve decided to make a special offer of 3 more widgets for the price of two!
That is, if they send you $80 you will post them 3 widgets so in effect, they get
one for free. You tell them it’s a great gift idea, etc..... and amazingly enough
you receive three orders back.
And you clear $50 net profit per order! Then you have another “smart” thought!
You circularise the 24 people who didn’t order! (Remember the 30
responses of which only 6 ordered?) And you tell them that the widget was so
successful that you had stock problems (or whatever) but you now have a new
batch available for immediate delivery.
Tell them it was so popular that lots of people not only re-ordered, but no one
asked for their money back under your guarantee! And you offer them, once
again, a widget at $40 and also your 3 for the price of 2 special. Guess what?
You get 4 orders!

The bottom line . . . you are now running at a slight profit! So you decide to
expand on the idea of these “leader” ads into other newspapers, making sure you
code each advert so that you know which paper it comes from.

At the same time you decide to approach a mailing-list broker and arrange to
“lease” the names or email addresses of 1000 people who have recently
purchased some sort of similar product as yours.

This is known as a “response” list of proven buyers.
When you receive this list sit down and hand address all the 1000 envelopes and
stick a standard postage stamp on each. The reason for this is that people like to
receive mail that looks “personal”.
If it’s got a white sticky address label on it and a bulk postage stamp imprint it
can quite often go in the rubbish tin without even being opened!
If you’re sending out 1000 emails the process is much simpler.

You draft out a 2-3 page brochure about your widget, get 1000 quick-printed,
and either post them out or email the brochure.
The cost of leasing these names (at around 20-25c each) plus the postage, plus
the envelope cost, plus the hand addressing, typesetting and printing means that
each name you post will cost you around $1. So the whole job, including the
lease of the mail list, has cost you around $1000.
And over two weeks, you receive 20 orders. That works out at a response rate of
2%.
Now your net profit on 20 orders is (20 x $30) $600 so you’re $400 out of
pocket!

But. . . you’re getting a bit smarter.... so when you post each widget order out
you include a re-order form which re-offers not only the single widget at $40 but
also the 3 for 2 offer that worked for you with the previous ads.
And not surprisingly you get enough repeat orders over the next couple of weeks
to “break even”.

So far so good.
You carry on like this for 3 months (remember it takes this long to get a small
business established) but realise that you’ve only made an overall profit of
$2000 for all the effort you’ve put in! Doesn’t seem worth it, does it?
But, when you sit down and add them up. . .
You may well have over 400 happy customers!!
And this is where you really get smart!

You have been searching for, and successfully located, a different type of widget
which can sell to the same customers. You are also able to buy it for only $10
but figure it could sell for $50 each! So you work out a 2-3 page promotion
telling all about it and also offering a 3-for-2 price, along with the single item
cost of $50 each.

You then despatch this promo to your 400 plus customers…..and also to the
several thousand other people who responded to your ads but didn’t buy! And
within a few days 10-15 orders arrive. And so on! Over the next two weeks you
receive 120 orders from your hot-400 list and around 80 orders from your larger
enquirers list.
A total of 200 orders!
But some people have taken you up on your 3 for 2 offer so you actually
have orders for a total of 350 new style widgets! And you’re netting between
$23 and $40 per widget depending on whether the order is for a single item or
your 3 for 2 offer. So at an average of better than $30 profit per item you’ve
cleared ($350 x $30) $10,500 in one burst – minus postage and packaging costs.
And with each of these orders you post out you include a re-order form. So you
take in, over the next month or so another $2-3000. And your mailing list has
grown from 400 to 480 customers as 80 odd people from your large enquiries list
(who didn’t want your first widget) wanted your second one. At this point . . .
you’ve found your formula!!

You build on it from here! Search for new widgets. Advertise for new clients.
Work new mailing and emailing lists. But…… always do small samples! Don’t
commit a lot of money to a new untried promotion, and make sure each
newspaper advertisement is coded so you can tell when the response from each
paper wears off. (The advertising staff will tell you how to code it).
If for example the net profit drops to half the price of the ad, then I would cancel
the ads in that paper for 5-6 weeks then try again. So if a small leader ad cost me
$100 and I only sold two $40 widgets from it, my profit after packaging and
posting would only be around $50 which only covers half the cost of the ad. So
I’d give that newspaper a miss for a while. Unless of course they agreed to do a
newspaper story on my magic widget, then in my ads I’d mention the newspaper
article to remind people that the media people thought my widget was quite neat!
Get the idea?

I had a ton of fun with this concept when I first advertised the hard-cover version
of my Millionaires Manual. This was a book on wheeler-dealer style bartering I
wrote several years ago.
I was spending up to $1000 a page for full page ads in various magazines and
providing the sales covered the ad costs I let the ads run. However, when sales
profits dropped below the cost of the ads I told the advertising heads of all seven
national magazines I was dealing with that I needed a
story (some editorial) to back up my ads, otherwise I would have no option but
to cancel the them.

Result.... six of the magazines wrote covering articles about this book (which
turned out to be a top seller in Australia....but is virtually unknown elsewhere). I
was then able to refer to these articles in my ads. So sales from those ads “took
off” again.

Then I extracted the best editorial comments from all of the six “editorials” and
used them as testimonials on the back cover of the paper-back version of the
book.
Over the past two years many people have asked me how I managed to achieve
such “glowing” testimonials from six different nationally known magazine
editors....now you know!

OK! Back to the story of our ambitious mail-order-internet entrepreneur!
At this point you will still have piles of people who have responded to your ads
but not bought anything. Now the thing is these people were interested enough to
respond to you in the first place but for reasons unknown to you have not YET
made a purchase from you. But they HAVE heard from you several times and
probably accept that you’re not a fly-by-nighter.
You may be inclined to throw their names in the rubbish tin. . . but DON’T....
because. . it’s already cost you good money to “capture” these names or emails.
So for a year or so send them out the odd promotion on your new products and
maybe offer them a special discount on your original widget. Maybe they could
have two for the price of one, etc.
Even if you only financially break even on this group but manage to get another
100 orders out of them, you have captured another 100 customers at no financial
loss to yourself!

Look at the logic of this. . . you have got 100 new customers at little cost and
with very little work, whereas it is going to cost you quite a lot of up-front
money and a lot of time to generate 100 new customers from newspaper ads,
leased mailing lists and internet ads! Make sense??

In reality, when I was selling the original hard-cover version of the Millionaires
Manual at $49 per copy, it was costing around $20 to locate each new customer.
So from the sale of each book I had to deduct the $20 in advertising costs that it
had taken to find that buyer. Each name on the mailing list cost me $20!
Makes you think, doesn’t it?

So if you lease a mailing list at 20c per name and you get a 2% response it
means that for every 100 names you post out (at a total cost of around $100) you
receive 2 replies. So it’s cost you $50 per reply! That is, each of those new
customers has cost you $50 each. So for obvious reasons, make sure you’ve got
plenty of profit stacked into your product.
Until you earn a $50 net profit out of each of these new customers you haven’t
broken even!

I personally considered that if I couldn’t achieve a 500% markup on a cheap
product then it was probably not worth handling. However with products that
sell for hundreds of dollars you can operate with a smaller markup as the dollar
value per sale is higher.

And these days it’s hard to do that up at the “front end” so we do it down at the
“back end” by making constant “fresh” offers to your existing customer base.

And that is the reality of the mailing game these days!! But you’ve got to be
prepared to spend the time and money to find the formula that suits you and your
product. There is no short cut. You may have to use variations of the above to
make it work for you...... depending on what your widget is -
….. and how interesting and compelling your promotional spiel is.

PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL
The trick to writing good promotional material is to work it all out very
carefully, put it on paper, then put it away in your drawer for a couple of days.
Then pull it out and look at it with a fresh mind - this way you will more easily
see the “flaws”. I personally never rush promotional material - it is too easy to
make a critical mistake. I once saw a character hastily draft a $600 ad for the
local newspaper. It was a good ad - except he’d forgotten to put his name,
address and phone number in. And when you’re drafting lots of ads, it’s amazing
how often you almost forget to insert a critical piece of information like this!
I usually try to get someone else to check my ads, just in case I’ve missed some
vital point.
The other trick to writing good promotional material is to be original and
enthusiastic Also the first few lines under the heading must grab peoples
attention, so for this reason I like to use “bullets”. A bullet is a brief one or two
line encapsulation of your message. Here are 3 bullets I used to promote a
publication. They were extremely effective!

• Double the turnover of virtually any business without one single new
customer.
• Buying property the impossible way - on YOUR terms - with very little
cash.
• Triple your restaurant trade on off-peak nights with no extra cash outlay.

The first thing that happens when you read a multi-page promotion is
this……….you search quickly for a couple of headings to tell you whether the
thing is going to be of any interest to you! Right? If the promotion contains
“bullets” I scan those because I know that the whole message will probably be
encapsulated in those few simple lines. If these “bullets” capture my attention, I
read further! But if I can’t figure out what the whole thing is about in the first 30
seconds I lose interest!

Remember your continuous profit will come out of repeat orders, or the “back
end”..... generally not the front end. Customers who like your operation will
remain loyal to you if you treat them well. It is a fact that a lot of people are
distrustful of mail order and internet operators but once you have their
confidence you will be able to do long term business with a fair proportion of
them.
Treat your mail order-internet business as a long term project. If you go into it
for quick overnight “bigbucks” then there will be a 90% chance that you will
come unstuck!

Admittedly with the advent of the internet there is a small handful of individuals
who got things absolutely right and made a total “killing”.
But these are in the minority.

HIGHER VALUE PRODUCTS
Just because you’re selling widgets in the $40-$50 price bracket doesn’t mean to
say that people won’t buy higher priced items off you. If you offer a $500 widget
to those that have purchased off you before, you will probably be pleasantly
surprised to find that you make a few sales! And you won’t need a 400-500%
mark-up on it either because of its high dollar value. Obviously lower priced
items must carry a very high mark-up otherwise you won’t cover your
promotional costs.
There is really no UPPER limit to what you can offer, dollar wise.
If customers like your operation, they will be prepared to look at whatever it is
that you are offering!
Many mail-order operators mentally restrict themselves by assuming that their
customers won’t go beyond the $40-$50 mark. A business associate of mine
used to think like this until he advertised $2000 items. He was astounded when
he received 53 orders!!! And he was absolutely delighted
as he had 100% profit stacked into his product! But he would never have
achieved this unless he had carefully built up his mail order company to the level
of customer confidence it enjoyed!
So your success is really only limited by your mindset, once you have your
company up and running.

The secret of successful mail-internet campaigns in these rough economic times.
. .is the effectiveness of your promotional material. Not the quality or the
appearance of the graphic layout . . . but the EFFECTIVENESS!

And how will you know if it’s going to be effective? Simple . . .

WRITE MATERIAL THAT WOULD CAPTURE YOUR ATTENTION
..........IF YOU HAD JUST RECEIVED IT!!

FINAL NOTE;

I built a highly successful electronics kitset business many years ago by giving
mail customers more than they expected. I would include in each order posted
out a small free gift. This was something of little value to us but of perceived
excellent value to the customer. Alternatively I would include a small credit
voucher. If their order was $20 or more I would sometimes include a $3 credit
voucher valid only for 3 months. The vast majority of customers ordered again
within the 3 month period so they could use up their voucher!!

If you are interested in the latest mind power techniques I have a brand new
book recently published -

BEYOND BELIEF; The Ultimate Mindpower Instructional Manual-
by James F. Coyle

You can check out all the details from my website –

http://www.mindtech.com.vu

You can buy a copy from the website or from virtually any AMAZON site.

Click on the links below. Also available from other Amazon sites worldwide.

Amazon USA
http://www.amazon.com/BEYOND-BELIEF-ultimate-instructional-manual/dp/1921787171/ref=sr_1_3?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293427892&sr=1-3

Amazon UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Belief-Ultimate-Mind-power-Instructional/dp/1921787171/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&qid=1297755489&sr=1-1

Amazon Canada
http://www.amazon.ca/Beyond-Belief-Ultimate-Instructional-Manual/dp/1921787171/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298934736&sr=1-1