Do you like fishing?
I'm going to tell you a fisherman's secret.
Every time a fisherman went to a secluded river or uncharted sea, he knew what kind of bait to throw in. If he wasn't familiar with the hunting ground, he always did scuba diving first. He also used underwater camera to survey the deep waters. The objective was to find out which bait the fish bite.
As a result, he got the specific fish that he wanted. There was rarely crab, shellfish, squid or other species in the net. This helped to keep the balance of Mother Nature.
My friend, this is the jealously guarded secret of the wealthiest fishermen. They don't throw in dragnet carelessly. They obey the law of fishery industry by catching the right ones.
What is the moral of story?
Sending sales letters to your prospects aimlessly is virtually the same as giving unsolicited junk mails! No doubt it is legally moral. But, most prospects hate these.
What should you do?
You must obey the law of proper direct mailing. Don't play the number game. Never waste your resource in this myth. A huge database of prospects doesn't mean you get lots of sales.
Some businesspeople may disagree to this. They argue that prospects are given a chance to remove their names from the mailing list.
But, why waste your time and money? Don't throw these leads away. Instead, you should sort out your prospects according to their needs.
There's a surefire way to do it. And, it won't cost you extra dime. However, it is hard work. You must spend most of your time sorting and splitting your list.
There's no trick in it. You just need to squeeze every single dime out from your prospects.
How?
You should conduct frequent survey to your prospects. I don't mean simple survey with multiple choice answers. Such survey rarely gets honest replies from your prospects unless you've very close relationship with them. That doesn't happen in real life.
Your goal is to find the specific prospects who will buy one specific product from you.
The only way is by using hidden survey technique.
Let me give you an example.
Imagine you've a list of car owners.
As we know, there're many different needs of car owners. Some have engine problems, bad tires, steering problem etc. Inexperience drivers may even want to know how to prevent or handle road accident.
Their problems are your opportunities to sell them the solutions. The business potential is unlimited.
Let say you spot one problem car owners may encounter.
Next, prepare a series of articles in auto responder for each problem.
In these articles, write up solution to the problem. Don't just write a sales message. You should provide good content that makes you look like a savior to your prospects' problem. Give them exactly what they need. Then, they will give you what you need in exchange.
At the end of the series of articles, provide a recommendation to products that solve their problem. That will be your goldmine.
When you've done with all articles, load up into your auto responder.
Now, you're ready to get into the most important part.
Your most important goal here is to ask them to get solution for their problem through auto responder.
Don't show the benefits of your solution. Instead, tell them a story showing the frustration of having this problem. If prospect genuinely has the need for a solution, she'll unknowingly get trap into auto responder deeper and deeper.
Does it work? Yes!
Remember a time when you read an article that made you say this "Ah Ha! That's how you do that". How would you feel towards the author?
Did you even end up buying something from that author?
I know your answer is yes.
Can you see now?
The article hides your intention to close sales. When a prospect wants more information in the auto responder, you hook her in the mood to buy from you. She'll follow your lead consistently in order to know how to solve her specific problem. She'll listen to your suggestion to buy.
This is the vital use of auto responder as hidden survey. It seems that many people don't realize this technique.
The fun part is that your auto responder system does all the sorting and splitting of your main list without lifting your fingers. Imagine you've 10 solutions to 10 problems. You'll have 10 tireless machines promoting 10 products and closing sales for you even on Sunday.
Another advantage is that you could even test out whether your prospects want to buy unrelated products.
For examples,
Some car owners may have bad smell on the seats. Can you sell expensive perfume to them?
Would car owners have mood to decorate their cars for festive seasons?
How do you know people will buy?
Throw in some surveys. Create the fear of loss mentality to your prospects. If the need hits straight into their heads, they'll follow your cloaked sales messages in your auto responder. You'll have no problem selling to them.
By now you should be able to see the benefits of using this technique.
This is how you sell anything to your prospects. No more wild goose chase. No more pushing your sales pitch wildly.
Eo Lim has helped many businesspeople succeed online using the revolutionary P.E.R.F.E.C.T. writing formula. Visit his site to find out how you can get a free consultation: http://www.EoLim.com
