What You Need To Know Before You Make An Offer

WATCH What You Need To Know Before You Make An Offer – Marketing Offers – The Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast Ep 31

Podcast Transcript

Shelly Miller  00:08

Welcome to the Mindwhirl Marketing podcast with your host, Mike and Shelly Miller, your source for B2B business building information where we talk sales and marketing and give you the insider secrets you need to know to grow your business. We want to help you attract leads and sales and show you how to align sales and marketing. So you get more sales faster with less cost.

Mike Miller  00:28

And alignment is the key.

Shelly Miller  00:31

You’re kidding. Oh, seriously. I agree. 100%.

Mike Miller  00:36

And I am by alignment. I mean, sales and marketing working together to create content offers, products, promotions, that your clients would love. And by doing that, you’re not only building your business, you’re branding yourself, and separating yourself from your competition, and growing faster and growing faster. Exactly. And it makes the salespeople happier. It makes the marketing people happier. And it makes you the business owner happier. Because you have more freedom, better lifestyle, and more money in the bank. And who doesn’t want that? Everyone wants that everyone is the American dream.

Shelly Miller  01:30

It is and it’s a wonderful thing is trying to make it happen for yourself. Exactly.

Mike Miller  01:35

So that didn’t isn’t that what life’s all about? It is for me, it is for me too. We don’t work 1214 hours a day. We create 12 to 14 hours a day. And we

Shelly Miller  01:47

love almost every moment of it.

Mike Miller  01:49

Yes, exactly.

Shelly Miller  01:50

Some moments are a little painful. Only one or two, only one or two. Yeah. But

Mike Miller  01:57

overall, we love what we’re doing. We love what we’re creating. We do. And we love

Shelly Miller  02:03

our clients. And we love offering tips to help other business owners because we know how valuable they are. And we want everybody who wants to have their own business, to have their own business. Absolutely flourish and grow. That’s right, because we believe there’s nothing like having your own business. It’s absolutely wonderful. It’s the best way to live a life

Mike Miller  02:25

it is exactly. Now you get to decide what you want to do today.

Shelly Miller  02:29

Yes.

Mike Miller  02:30

Are you successful? It’s because of you?

Shelly Miller  02:33

Yes.

Mike Miller  02:34

Yeah. So to that point, right. To that end, we have a really good topic today. It’s all about offers. So offers are like some people, some marketers will tell you it’s everything. And it pretty much is. But they omit a lot when they say it’s everything. And I want to get clear on what an offer is. And so we’re going to go all over this is going to be like a, we’re going to pull everything in to try to come to a conclusion with this episode. And we’re going to do it in 30 minutes.

Shelly Miller  03:14

All right!

Mike Miller  03:15

Let’s get going. So when you think about offers, right, so Shelly, and I have had disagreements over the last 20 years about offers. That’s that’s where all of our disagreements as business partners have been? Yes, it’s the truth. Because how much do you give? How much do you give away? So like, and I’m not talking about chalk in all boxes, right. So that which is a gift that you give to a prospect. So after you’ve qualified them, and they want to meet with you, and you know that it’s a, like 80% chance of a deal. You send them something that separates you from anybody else that they would be talking to

Shelly Miller  03:57

right

Mike Miller  03:58

And you’re going to spend money on it, you’re going to spend like 50 bucks on it.

Shelly Miller  04:02

Right? You really will shock and all of them. Right, exactly.

Mike Miller  04:06

So we’re not talking about that. That’s a marketing device. So really, what we’re talking about is and let me preface this with direct response marketing. Because there’s two kinds of marketing, there’s branding, which is everything Coca Cola does, and what most of the things you see, all of the Superbowl commercials are branding, then there’s direct response and direct response is right now Mike Lindell is a great example of direct response. So he has like an offer, you know, 20% 30% off. Yes, to get to encourage you to take action today.

Shelly Miller  04:54

And he has that offer a lot, right. It’s,

Mike Miller  04:56

it’s on one product or another Exactly. Just use promo code. code. Yes. You know, CNN, you know, CNBC, and you’ll be able to

Shelly Miller  05:08

I don’t think he uses that as a promo code.

Mike Miller  05:10

I’m not sure. Let’s move on from that. Okay.

Mike Miller  05:13

I’m just saying. So, you know, you use the promo code, you get a discount. Excellent. That’s direct response. Now, where did like all this, these ideas come from? Well, really, more than anyone else. I mean, you could say, Jay Abraham, but really more than anyone else. It’s Dan Kennedy. He’s the kind of he’s not the father of direct response. He’s the guy who brought direct response into the internet age. So there’s all these copywriters before Him, who created this style of advertising. And David Ogilvy even had a direct response division of his marketing agency. But the whole idea is to create an offer. That’s magnetic. Right? So everything that you heard on the internet, comes from Dan Kennedy, and his magnetic marketing product. And his whole idea is to create an offer that so well, as Bill Glazer, his one time partner said, outrageous, Mm hmm. That it gets attention. And it automatically gets people to go, Oh, I want that. Right. Right. Yeah. So it’s kind of like, you know, having a knife that if you buy the knife for $9, you also get the slicer and the dicer. And, and the guide and the book on, you know, the cookbook and the recipes, and you get all these things. And that’s not all right, if you order in the next five minutes, we’ll double your order, just pay shipping and handling. Right? Oh, my goodness, it’s these offers that have driven all of like the TV? infomercials. Right? Right. And that’s where direct response really took off in the 80s was with infomercials. But in the 90, you know, 96 to 2004, four or five, direct response really embedded itself into the internet. So why am I telling you all this? Because it’s all it’s all offer driven? Right? So when Shelly and I have discussions about offers, it’s, you’re given too much away? Right? Or, or why? Why would you? So Shelly always says, we haven’t tested just trying to sell it yet. Why would you go ahead and like, give a big discount or add in all these other things? Why would you do that right off the bat? And it’s a good question. And so like I said, we’re gonna go all over the place. What I thought the best way to do this, and you know, for and this is what made me rethink the offer thing, okay, is to go to what the legends of copywriting who are still alive, and some who are dead, said, was the very best sales letter ever written. And that sales letters written by Gary Halbert, and it’s, it was a personal ad that he wrote and placed in like, the LA Times or something because he was in LA at the time.

Shelly Miller  08:43

Yes, he was.

Mike Miller  08:44

Alright, so he writes a personal ad. And it’s three pages. Like you know, it’s it’s not a small thing. It was probably a whole whole page ad that he took out. Oh, yeah. newspaper? Yes. So definitely

Shelly Miller  09:01

small three columns.

Mike Miller  09:03

Yeah, exactly. three pages, three columns. 10 point type. So So the thing is, is that again, this is the best sales letter ever written probably. So I’m going to, I’m going to go through it so that you understand it. If you want to see a copy of it. search Google for Gary Halbert personal ad. And look at the first one that comes up is the Gary Halbert letter, website and the title says generous creative businessmen, etc. Right? So that’s what it starts with. It’s the headline is, are you more than just another pretty face? generous creative businessman wants to find a hot, sexy woman with a good sense of humor? Are you a soft, sexy, exciting lady who would like to have a little taste of part time paradise? If so read on. My name is Gary and I’m looking for a very special woman who would like to share a few small, but exciting adventures with me. And who wants to enjoy a part time slice of the good life? Are you that woman? Maybe Maybe not. The first thing it depends on is me. Now I want to point that out because Are you thinking like I’m thinking that the first thing this thing depends on is me whether I think you’re attractive as what you know or not.

Shelly Miller  10:27

Yes.

Mike Miller  10:29

Okay. So now that’s what you would think that’s what I’m thinking that he’s saying, you know, the first thing this depends on is me. But then he says, you see if I’m not your kind of guy, than what I have to offer may not be your idea of how life should be lived. So he like reefer reframes it right there. So I’m already thinking one thing, he reframes it. So then he goes on, to say, what is normal day is like, and how it goes and works out and that he’s a workaholic, and he likes to do. He likes to work a lot. And then he talks about that he wants a Miller time. He works so hard that but he has nothing, no one to share his evenings with. But the reason why is that he did three and a half months ago, but for three and a half months, he’s been sulking. And he’s been mad because the the love of his life left him. And the reason she left him is because it was too good. Right things were just too good. And she needed things to be horrible. And so he’s gone out on a few dates, and he’s met some people, but they turned out to be flat out bummers. What examples you do okay, you asked for it. Try these out for size. Then he goes through Zelda The princess. He talks about Sherry, the tragic. Karen the would be prostitute, Claudia, the actress. And then and he talks all about, you know how horrible they are. And then he says seven things Gary does not want from a woman. Number one, death or disease. Now think of it as I’m reading this think about the offer. What’s the offer here? Gary doesn’t want death or disease. He doesn’t want drug dramas. He doesn’t want desperate dilemmas. And imagine you’re you writing an ad for your business saying I don’t want this. I don’t want that. marriage. He doesn’t want marriage. He doesn’t want a sexual swinger. He doesn’t want a sexual prude. And he doesn’t want a woman who can’t stand prosperity. Right?

Shelly Miller  12:36

Yes.

Mike Miller  12:37

So he goes so he’s told you all these things that he doesn’t want. And we come down through here and then we start to get to the so much for specifications. You know, after he says he wants a slender, healthy body and a reasonably small slim waist with rather generous breasts. God That sounds redneck doesn’t it? He says a very pretty face and a good sense of humor. Then, quite frankly, you sound like heaven to me so much for specifications. And now if after all this, you’re still interested, what can you expect from me? Finally, we’re getting into an offer. Okay, after two and a half pages Exactly. Well, the first word and the headline of this ad is generous. Now. Okay, side note, look at what he just said. He’s referring to the headline, which is how important a headline is okay, carrying on. It’s true, though. It is right. And I am generous. However generous doesn’t mean chump. It also doesn’t mean I want to pay for sex. That’s ridiculous. Any man in LA who wants to pay for sex doesn’t have to write an ad. All he has to do is answer one. Now. So we were getting into the offer, but he’s still disqualifying. Those ads are all over the place even in the Yellow Pages. Here’s what I mean by generous. I love to buy presents for women. I like to take them to movies and plays and I love to send flowers and buy them jewelry and clothes. And if I get really involved with a woman, I rather enjoy helping to support her and helping her to elevate her lifestyle. I also give great vacations. I love to travel for long weekends, four days or so to Acapulco, Hawaii, Fort Lauderdale, the Bahamas and so on. I only fly first class and I try to always stay in the best hotels and eat and the best restaurants. Does any of this sound good to you? I hope so. This is an honest ad. Every word of it is true. And although I’ve made a modest attempt to make it entertaining, you should also know I’m sincere. So then he finishes up with Are you leery about answering the personal ad I’m not I don’t blame you. I am too and then he explains the other personal ads that are out there that are sick and disgusting and horrible. But then he finishes it with. If you’re at all interested or even curious, please write and tell me about yourself and how to get in touch with you. Also please send a recent photo.

Shelly Miller  15:04

But of course,

Mike Miller  15:04

yes, if you’re Yeah, so who knows, maybe we’ll click and maybe we won’t, but at the very least, you won’t be writing to some six psychotic, and maybe just maybe it’ll all turn out great. Just write to Gary blah, blah, blah. Thank you for your support. And I don’t know why he put that in there.

Shelly Miller  15:22

But thank you for your support.

Mike Miller  15:24

Yes, yes. So think about this, I guess.

Shelly Miller  15:27

So he doesn’t get hate mail? says hi. Would you put this I have it. I have no idea. That’s a very interesting way. And

Mike Miller  15:33

I agree. So too, so so the offer the offer, what is the offer? So now Gary has has money out the Ying Yang. That’s a good word. And he, and he’s a successful businessman, and he’s writing an offer on what’s most like his most important product? himself?

Shelly Miller  15:55

Yes.

Mike Miller  15:56

So what did he say? He didn’t say? If you answer this, I’m going to give you $100 just for sending me your picture. I’m going to pay you for your picture. You know what I mean? Yeah. A full length picture. If you send me a headshot, I’ll pay you $50. But if you see me, send me a full length picture, I’ll give you 100. Right. And if we go out on a date, I’ll give you $500 on the spot. And if you’re not happy, I’ll double the offer.

Shelly Miller  16:21

Exactly. Can you imagine that

Mike Miller  16:24

No

Shelly Miller  16:25

Oh, my goodness. Now somebody’s gonna try that. But anyway, exactly. But no, he didn’t say it. Basically. The offer is Me. Me. That’s what he’s saying. There. He is saying me. Yeah,

Mike Miller  16:34

I mean, you know, that’s and and impressed. straightforward. Yeah. He’s saying impress me. You know, if you like this, if you like what I’m saying. Then you’re the specific someone. ICP, right? Yes. that I’m looking for. And I can make it worth your while for us to do business.

Shelly Miller  16:55

That’s exactly what he’s doing. Yes.

Mike Miller  16:57

Yeah. Very well. But and so it goes back to what Shelly always said, Okay. You haven’t tried to sell it straight yet? Why? Are you going to add in all these things? or Why are you going to discount it?

Shelly Miller  17:12

yet? Why are you going to sweeten the deal? When you haven’t even put the deal out there yet? You don’t you know, your deal. The way that it is your offer? The way that it is? The product that you have yet, you know, is wonderful. It could be everybody might want it. So why would you start out adding all these offers? You aren’t an infomercial, you don’t need to add and we’ll add a second set. And we’ll send one to your mother in law. I mean, it’s just why why you know, and I have another example about that. That it’s, it’s after the offer, but it kind of To me it is solidified. Why I take that position. Okay. I was listening to Dan Kennedy one time and he was talking about when you do an offer, and you it’s not working. And so you you try to fix it. And instead of fixing one thing, you fix 10 things on it. Kind of like he used his his sulky horse racers. Yes, I’m from Ohio, and I, you know, Delaware, Ohio, and where were they raised? Like, that’s the brown jug. So I was very interested in never forgot the story. So it would be like so your horse isn’t running as fast as he should. So you add a new saddle, a new blanket, a new a new you buy a new sulky, you do wonders? Yeah, you buy 15 things and you do it. Then the next time you run? If he’s better, which one made him better? All of them? Yeah, one of them. You don’t know now because Okay, so let’s do that in reverse. Or? If you Yeah, and if he’s slower, same problem, which which one made him slower? Yeah, you don’t know. So it’s the same thing with an offer. So you have an offer? And you’re going to add 15 things to it to? Well, I’ll do this. And I’ll do that. And I’ll do I’ll make it so outrageous this way that you’ll buy it? Well, that’s, that’s worse than even putting the offer out there. There. I mean, it’s just, you don’t even so you might get sales. So are you gonna run that kind of offer every time you know, where you’ve added in so many discounts when you don’t even know that you needed to do it? Right. So and and I have a you know, we’ve have had people say, Well, you know, it costs money to test. It does cost less, but marketing and sales and advertising for free. Exactly. Everything costs, money ever. Anything that’s worth doing for your livelihood and your business. It costs money and you are testing. I mean, you get up in the morning and decide to do a new workout routine. What are you doing testing? How about a new food or a new restaurant? What are you doing testing, you could waste money. It might be a horrible restaurant, you might hate the exercise. I mean, shoot, I’ve done that I just threw away an app because the exercises were so terrible that no one could do them. But anyway, I tested so I’ve invested the money to test, right? And that’s what you should do. Yeah, you, you’ll have problems with the testing numbers. If you come out with a product, and you throw 15, or five things on it, the very first time you’ve put the offer out, you have a problem, because then you don’t know, you

Mike Miller  20:21

know this, right?

Shelly Miller  20:22

You don’t know what works or what didn’t, right.Or if you needed to discount or not,

Mike Miller  20:25

Let’s so let’s let’s talk about offers. There’s many kinds of offers. When I say let’s talk about offers, I mean, so what are the kinds? Yes, to me, they break down into two categories. The first is the one that you know, of, it’s the product offer, or the campaign offer. The second but, but the second one may be hidden from you, and you just don’t realize it. The second one is the business. The business is developed to deliver a certain offer. Like, let’s take Mike Lindell. Yes. Okay. I’m gonna say give us an example. So okay, my pillow. Okay, so he starts with the pillow. But now he’s got sheets and comforters and bed toppers and towels and pajamas. And, and he came out with couch, pillows, couch pillows. They’re 20%. So he’s running a special on the new couch pillows? They’re 20% off. Okay, how much are they at? 20%? off? They’re 49.95. That’s interesting. That’s probably what they would cost. If you’re buying a premium couch pillow, you know what I mean? Yes, like the little square pillows. I’m not talking about the ones in the back. I’m talking about the ones you bunched behind your back. Anyway, the business model, right? He built that product around the offer. Right? So and that’s, that’s more like how Shelly thinks about things. She thinks, okay, if we’re gonna create an offer, and we want to make it irresistible, magnetic, then what’s the maths? Right. So how much does it cost to do this piece and that piece and that piece, and now let’s figure out where the profit is. And then how we can automate it or make it so that we can do it cheaper, so that we can still make the same kind of profit, because the one thing we can’t do is take it out of the profit. And see, I’m like, it’s easy. Just take it out of the profit. And she goes, No, we can’t ever take it out of the profit.

Shelly Miller  22:49

Well, I think your goal should always be to not take it out of your profit. Yeah. So if you can, you know, put in all these factors, while you’re while you are creating the offer,

Mike Miller  23:00

right, you’re better off goal is to increase the profit?

Shelly Miller  23:03

Yes. You know, and, and there are certain things as your business ages and you test things, you’ll know, for example, another factor in what you just mentioned, is, if you know if, you know, you figure out the money and how much each thing would cost, if you’re partnering with other people, you would know, okay, I need, let’s say, 200 people to buy this. So now you also have a number of people that you know, you have to get to buy this, well, some of the partners might have email lists that are so huge, that it’s obvious, you’re going to get 200 sales. So great. This is a wonderful offer.

Mike Miller  23:39

Right? The people

Shelly Miller  23:40

who will buy this are in Yes, me and my two partners who are in on this offers offer.

Mike Miller  23:46

Yeah, so like to your point. So if you go through the math, or maths, and then you realize that you have to you can make this work. If you sold 200, then that’s not just your goal. That’s your requirement.

Shelly Miller  24:03

That’s your requirement, you have

Mike Miller  24:05

to look out 200 you have to do everything you can to sell 200. If and then you should put a timeframe on it. I’m going to sell it within this time. Now that’s for a campaign offer. Yes, but but I want to read you a little section of this book, the seven figure agency roadmap by Josh Nelson, in the back of one of the chapters, he says this, and I want you to think about this as an art from an offer perspective. So he has some action items, and I’m gonna read three of them. Number one, put together your service offering, get clear on what you’re going to do for your clients. Even if you’re already established. It’s a great time to rethink. Am I clear on what the best service offering is right now to figure out the cost elements and how you’ll get the work done, as well. As the steps to fulfilling and who’s going to do what, three, establish your two to three offerings. Again, try not to have a huge list of options, but instead drill down on just two or three main solution packages. Now, doesn’t that sound like the business is built around an offer?

Shelly Miller  25:20

It does to me,

Mike Miller  25:21

me too. It means that, hey, we’re going to do everything we can to ensure that the that we can show the value we’re going to deliver. And we’re going to do it at a cost that is attractive to the, into the ICP. But it has to be what it is because we have done all the maths, and we figured out what it’s going to cost to do all these things, and to give them the value that they want. This is the price This is the best offer that we can make. And that’s the business. Yes, it seems brilliant to me. I mean, that seems to be the way that you want to go at everything. So even if you have a product or a service that you offer, and you’re creating a new product or service offering, you want to make that product inside your business, you want to make it offer based, like to me you want to say, Okay, here’s what we’re like, take the Mike Lindell example, okay, here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to sell Chinese pillows, and we’re gonna make them, we get them for 20. So we’re gonna sell them for 4999. But we’re actually going to raise the price by 20%. So we can give a 20% discount. That’s the that’s the product. That’s the whole plan.

Shelly Miller  26:48

Well, and we’re not claiming that we know how he does. No, I do. I do want to say no, Michael, Dell absolutely doesn’t have Chinese pillows. He does make them here in America. Oh, I’m

Mike Miller  26:56

sorry.

Shelly Miller  26:57

Yeah, I apologize. But he? No, that’s correct. Well, you were mentioning it earlier. And that’s the cheapest policy, he makes it the cheapest possible. So I look for an excuse in first order principles at the $49 a pop for a couch cushion. And he’s going to give you 20% off. Well, the 49 I believe already included his markup. So I mean, it already included it. You know, I think his profits in Oh, it’s he’s more than half of that his profit. So what did he do the maths? Why did he make couch cushions? Because he already had the factory that was making the pillows? Yeah. And why did he do pillar toppers? Because he already you know, right? And why did he start making pajamas because it’s the same stuff as the dang sheets. I mean, you know, it all makes sense. He, he thought about this, it all works. The maths works. And he knows how to he can put more offers out to get more sales, he just turns it on, you know, basically turns on the sales funnel, if you will, by sending out promotions and offers. And there you go.

Mike Miller  28:02

Right, exactly. So I know that you may still have questions about, you know, offers and everything. But really think about this. What Shelly’s idea is, is have you tried to sell it without selling it for half. Like there’s this guy in Sarasota, Florida. I think he’s a real estate agent. I think he’s in real estate with a rebate. So his his whole business model is built around, I’m gonna get a commission and I’m gonna give you half. So the thing is, is, that’s great if it actually increases business. But if his business didn’t increase by twice as much, he’s losing money.

Shelly Miller  28:44

Yes, yes.

Mike Miller  28:45

So did he did he? Did he think about that? Did he do the maths? Or was it just like, Hey, I got a great idea. Let’s make an attractive magnetic offer. And let’s give half of the half of the commission back to the person.

Shelly Miller  28:58

Well, a lot of people do that they don’t think about they don’t do the maths, they just want the business. Also, and this is for another podcast. I know we’re at the end here. But sometimes you do. Or they called loss leaders where basically it does cost you money. But you can get you get something else like back value or in the back end. So you still the math still works. So there’s so many kinds of offers. And yes, if you if you have questions about it,

Mike Miller  29:22

we would love to help you exactly let us know. But still, there’s a lot of information in this podcast. All right. That’s all the time we got for you right this week.

Shelly Miller  29:30

We’ll see you next Thursday. Thanks again for listening to the Mindwhirl Marketing Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google podcast Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are sold. Plus, check us out on YouTube. Grab some marketing tips and insight and subscribe to our channel while you’re there.