The Easiest Way to Sell a "Horse" [Details Inside]

Good morning. Sometimes the easiest way to sell a horse is with a sign that says horse for sale. That sounds pretty simple, but this was kind of the peak thinking that I was having in 1997 here. And I'll tell you the genesis of it because I I love going back through these journals and seeing the things that where they were born and things that I still use to this day.

So, I'm going to tell you the genesis of this where when I first moved to Florida, I was playing golf at a club just down the road here, actually, that every day between my condo and the golf course. I would drive past this house and this woman had a little sign in her yard that said, "Tupperware sold here." And I thought, "That tells you everything you need to know right there. If you're looking for Tupperware, there it is."

she's got it right in her lawn. And it stuck with me that it was a very important distinction, right? That this is something it's crystal clear. So, I've had this same thought and taking that idea of saying something in the simplest terms, especially when we're trying to get somebody to just call and listen to a recorded message.

Sometimes we just need to be overtly clear about something. So, here we are in San Francisco and Eban Pagan and I uh were we met this gentleman who was a sales rep for he was a real estate sales rep for a developer who were selling these loft condos in uh in San Francisco. and he was frustrated because Eban and I, our talk at the main event was how to use direct response ads. And when we look at it here, oh my goodness, is this guy.

Okay. the uh well, we're talking about direct response ads and we were comparing it to personal promotion ads and to institutional ads or clever ads and he was realizing, man, what these brokers, what these developers are doing is 100% just image ads that are doing nothing. He showed us the ads. These guys were spending $20,000 a week to run a full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle real estate section.

And the ad was a overhead view of a turtle shell. And there was a arrow pointing to the turtle's head saying, "This is you." And then there was another arrow pointing to the shell saying this is your new loft shell at what the name of the thing the candy lofts or whatever the uh the thing was and just that little logo at the bottom and that was it. That was it.

The image was to make this a cool place to live because it was the developer's son who was in charge of the uh marketing and had his uh one of his design friends, creative design friends come up with this amazing ad. And you could see you could probably see presenting this idea as isn't this great? Oh, it's so clever. But nothing was happening with this.

You know, Jack was sitting in these lofts empty every weekend waiting for people to come by and nobody was there. So, we did we wrote a little classified ad for him in the real estate section and we just said we started out Soma Som A, which is south of Market. Everybody in San Francisco knows what that area is, but Soma dash really cool loft. You finish inside details on voicemail and the phone number and was interesting because we wanted to seem like one person selling one thing and we used the words details on voicemail instead of 24hour or free recorded message.

And I use I've used this in many different things coming forward, but for this little period of time, this became one of my uh go-to things. And I've used this in uh I've used this in lots of ways, and I've seen it, you've probably seen it, too, where things are specifically to direct people's action. What I realized in part of this is that the idea of the ad is not to sell somebody on the thing. It's to sell the next step in the process.

All I wanted to do was get somebody to call the recorded message to call the voicemail. So saying that whatever we had the uh we had the number of square feet that was a a thing in there and uh all we wanted them to do was call and listen to the message. And then the message we made as simple as possible because the purpose of the message is to get somebody to come to the see the lofts or to leave their uh name and information to get information about the loft. And it was very very um rewarding.

Let's say that we ran that ad and in with one insertion that cost less than $200, he had 28 people come to the uh come to the lofts that weekend compared to nothing from the $20,000 ad. So, I've gone that I've had that same thing. You'll see very soon coming up with a Porsche dealer that we did exactly the same horse for sale ad. I see it everywhere now.

Like we look at even with uh signs. I was in Toronto and there was a little sandwich uh sign with a uh with the words that said delicious coffee this way. and it just had an arrow pointing to this alley where there was a a coffee shop uh on there. So, I've you're going to see as we go that some great examples of this, but what's the best way that you could articulate whatever it is that you're selling by just saying what it is and saying click here or because now we have the advantage of being able to get people to click here to go to a thing.

And uh but here we were trying to get people to call a recorded message. Well, whatever the action is that you want somebody to do, go to a URL or still call a recorded message. What's the easiest way that you could do it for your business? I got a funny email the other day from Rick.

It says, "Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?" And I laughed to myself because I was thinking, you know, yes, I I can do that. That's what I do.

Is the funny thing, what I really realized is that every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people on to that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you, and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business. I'm all for it. m.

I'm going to do for the first time a 50inute profitfinder workshop and you're going to join me live on Zoom and we're going to go through a 50inute exercise. Bring your pen. Bring a notebook or piece of paper. And I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there.

But I'm going to show you where to look for it. So, it's free. It's for you. m.

this Friday. Just watch. Go to What did we call the website, Josh? >> 50inut profitfinder.

m.