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There’s a chap in Florida that markets himself as “the Master of Internet Prospecting.” He is a good mentor, he provides a good product, his training videos are concise and complete, and his websites convert well. I know these things because I paid the man $200 for one of his video courses so I could learn how to use social networking sites for developing prospects. I was, and am, fully satisfied with the product I purchased, although I quickly discovered that things weren’t quite as simple as this “guru” led me to believe. |
I got my money’s worth, but he will never get another penny.
“Ouch!” you say? What’s wrong with this picture? How did this man move me from “completely satisfied customer” to “irritated victim?”
One of the products this man provides is a daily motivation site which uses a scheduled autoresponder to send subscribers a daily motivational message. This message, with copyright information included, can then be used to keep your name in front of all of your social networking “friends.” The motivational messages are free, and may be freely republished, so long as you include the copyright data.
I use them every day on MySpace, where I have more than 4,000 friends. I know – because many of them tell me – that everyone enjoys reading these inspirational messages. In fact, many of my MySpace friends pass these messages on to their friends, where they act as a viral marketing tool for their author.
That’s neat, and I’m grateful to have this service. I get free value, he builds a viral market.
Alas, once you’ve subscribed to these “daily motivations,” you become a target for seemingly endless sales pitches for this or that training course. How endless? On one memorable day, I received more than six of this man’s pitches! As if that weren’t annoying enough, I also get the same messages from the scheduled autoresponder he uses to maintain contact with his paying clients.
So, Instead of SIX sales pitches that memorable day, I got THIRTEEN! Perhaps you begin to understand why this man is unlikely to get another penny out of me. He abuses the trust his subscribers place in him and overloads them with spam. I am not going to reward his poor judgment by giving him more money, and neither should you.
I bought my original course in February of 2008, so I have been receiving this man’s marketing barrage for more than a year. During that time, I have made some interesting observations. He does long run-ups to promote his training programs… I hear about them for a month or more before the actual date arrives. He always includes testimonials, which is good marketing practice, but I rarely find them convincing. They seem just a bit too self-serving to me, and the irritation I feel at receiving one or two pitches from the man every day diminish the credibility of his message.
He also – always – warns that the class is about to sell out, then, at the last moment, he describes some sort of “mistake” that forces him to offer “just one or two more seats” to – you guessed it – the same weary targets.
“My server crashed during the final moments of sign ups,” or “My son made a mistake and may have deleted some of our late sign ups,” or “Our credit card processor’s software failed at a critical point, and your orders may have been lost.” You get the idea… Every single ad campaign for every single course includes one of these “disasters” that “force” him to re-open registration, “just in case we missed your order.”
I subscribe to a good many mailing lists. Most of them are quite valuable, and none of them, with the singular exception of “the Master of Internet Prospecting,” abuse the privilege I have granted of being welcome to access my Inbox whenever they wish, and that leads us to the point of this exercise.
Every single one of them provides me with valuable free information, and every single one of them wants to sell me something. I know that, and they know I know, and it works. It works because everyone wins.
When I get mail from Frank Kern, Mike Dillard, Tim & Anthony Buchalka, Anik Singal, Brent Hodgson or Steve Clayton, I read it.
I’m a big fan of Mike Dillard’s “Magnetic Sponsoring,” and those of you who have read Mike’s powerful book already understand why I axed “the Master of Internet Prospecting” from my reading list, while I continue to read Kern, Clayton, Mike Dillard and the others.
Mike Dillard is representative of them all. He does not contact me on a daily basis. When he does, he gives me valuable free advice long before he adds a sales message. That advice is so valuable that I recommend Mike’s newsletters to anyone, whether they ever intend to buy his products or not. Frank Kern and the others are the same. They offer real value, and they treat their readers with respect. In return, they generate sales, over and over again.
The guys who “get it” provide me with value whether I buy from them or not (I often do… that’s a clue!) They help me improve my marketing skills, obtain better Page Rankings on Google, and maximize my income. They never, ever, insult my intelligence, and they never, ever, flood my Inbox with garbage. When they ask me for my money, I often give it to them, and when I don’t, it isn’t because they’re annoying me, it’s because my monthly budget has been exhausted.
They never seem to suffer those nagging problems “the Master of Internet Prospecting” seems to encounter on a regular basis.
Frankly, I think “the Master of Internet Prospecting” should get a copy of “Magnetic Sponsoring” and discover why I don’t read his email any more.
Ken McVay has been marketing online since 1998, and is currently writing an online training guide to creating and maintaining monetized blogs. Ken’s an avid fan of Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring, and invites you to visit his Magnetic Sponsoring blog at http://KenMcVay.com
