It’s a lot easier to demonstrate how hammering a nail works than trying to explain it. When someone sees it in action,he instantly understands, even if he doesn’t yet have the skill to do it himself. At least he can see how it works and know it is possible to get it to work. Either way, he is a lot closer to having the confidence to swing a hammer toward a nail pinched between two of his fingers.

As info-marketers, we often find ourselves in situations where we are explaining things that appear simple to us but are difficult for our customers to visualize—or even to believe are true.

And so we learn elements of persuasion. Ways to make our arguments believed. To be convincing. Yet all of this falls short of proof.

During a coaching call with me, an info-marketer was trying to decide which niche to pursue. While he’d been working within a certain niche for years, he was curious about marketing to other niches, wondering if they mighthold better opportunities. But in those new niches, he didn’t have any success stories.

In his current niche, this info-marketer had his own success story along with those of two other people he’d been working with. For an info-marketer, stories that prove what you say actually works are essential. When considering which niche you should pursue,having case examples that prove what you say is an important factor. I recommended to this particular info-marketer that he stay in his current niche and use the stories he already had to build his business.

In newsletters, during coaching calls and in your products, it’s essential to include case studies, success stories or examples from people who are applying what you teach and generating results. Think of it this way, your new customer is going through your product, feeling resistance within himself as he tries to implement what you teach. Plus, he may also be getting resistance from his family, employees and others. What do you do? More teaching? No, more teaching won’t help. You have to demonstrate. Show him what works by showing examples of it working for others. This proves your teaching works and helps him refute his spouse, his employees and his own self-doubt. You are building his confidence, which will greatly speed up his implementation.

Another great benefit to case studies is they keep your newsletters new and interesting, even though you are demonstrating the same principles over and over. Each example is as different as the customer you profile. Readers enjoy the story, and they enjoy seeing the results.

My formula for creating case studies is simple. I start with an interview, and then provide the interview transcript to a writer to create the written case study.

Here are some interview questions to try. As you read the questions, replace the words “info-marketing process” with the name of your product or coaching program:

• What’s your background? How did you get started doing what you are doing now?
• How did you discover [info-marketing process]?
• What did you think of it when you first saw it?
• How did you get started implementing [info-marketing process]?
• What has changed in your life since you discovered [info-marketing process]?
• What advice do you have for someone else who has just discovered [info-marketing process] and is deciding whether or not to try it?

I conduct these interviews personally. It gives me a chance to provide my members with a small amount of free coaching and some ideas for them to try, plus I can explore something interesting by asking follow-up questions.

Once I have a good interview recorded, I provide the recording to a writer. For a journalist or a writer, taking this type of interview and turning it into a compelling case study is relatively easy. Because of the state of the newspaper industry today, you can easily find good writers. You should be able to find one for your project with a Craigslist ad or by posting your job on Elance. com.

Once you have these case studies, you can use them in monthly newsletters, pull them together into books to give to prospects or include them in products to illustrate particular lessons your members got particularly right.

Use demonstrations, capture case studies everywhere you can and teach through examples rather than relying only on lectures.

What do you think? Do you have any examples of stories that prove your customers get results from what you teach? Or do you disagree and have a better way? Visit the page Don’t Tell, Demonstrate, and scroll down to the bottom of the page to leave me a comment. I read every comment and reply when appropriate.

Best wishes,

Robert Skrob

By testing a direct mail campaign, I had figured out I could recruit new members at a cost of $148.00 each. I explained to Dan that while the new members would be great, I’d have to put up cash to mail the campaign and then fulfill the memberships for four months before I generated enough profit to recover my investment. I’d have to invest about $50,000.00 to scale up this business when I had planned to create the business without any cash investment.

Dan asked me, “How many members are you planning to have in this business?”

“5,000 within five years.”

“And how much are you planning to sell this business for in five years?”

“$5 million,” I told him confidently.

Dan’s eyes squinted at me as he asked, “Do you really think it’s reasonable to expect to build a business and sell it for $5 million within five years without investing ANY money into it?”

I had fallen into the trap of wanting so much for something to be true that I believed it was true.

I created a free special report that details what’s really possible in the info-marketing business and what is necessary to create it.

I illustrated and outlined it in the Information Marketing Money Machine report. This report outlines exactly what is necessary to build a sustainable, long-term information marketing business that’ll grow and create an asset you can sell.

After you’ve reviewed the report, go back to Information Marketing Money Machine and leave me a comment about what you think of it or any new questions that came up once you read it.

This report is designed to outline the business model necessary for a successful info-marketing business. It’s part of a larger template I’ll provide if enough people find the Information Marketing Money Machine valuable.

Best wishes,

As the President of the Information Marketing Association, I host a monthly coaching call for info-marketers who have questions and are trying to launch their infopreneur business. Here is a question from Ted in LaHoya, California about transforming online newsletters into a mailing. Since this is a common question, I decided to prepare an article about this challenge to help you.

Back in 2006, the internet information marketers began to realize that although they had a great run sending out emails, the lists they used were waning. There were a lot of marketers who decided to try and convert their online clients to a mailing list. One way to help encourage online clients to give out their mailing address is to create a product that will interest them. For example, one information marketer who did this was Chris Pizo. He came up with the audio program that he knew his clients would just love and he offered to send it out to them for free. Of course it didn’t encourage all of them, but it encouraged a huge number to go ahead give him their full address to send the free CD. It doesn’t have to be a free CD though. It could be a free CD or a free report. It could be any thing you would like. But then it becomes something that is kind of a headline for one of your next emails. It is all about how this free product is going to be available and all they have to do to get it, is to click on a link and give you their mailing address.

You don’t have to give up on your email clientele. It really is not all that expensive to reformat your offline newsletter and stick it online, even if it’s brief or converted into articles. Regardless, you are going to want to continue tending to your email list. Email does have a much lower perceived value, and a much lower emotional attachment than something received in the mail. In the end, the goal is to create an emotional response, which is really trust. This is accomplished much easier through mailings rather than email.

There have never been greater, more diverse, more lucrative opportunities for everyone-experienced, successful entrepreneurs to rank beginners-in the field of information marketing. If you can name a topic, there is a market for providing information about it. People buy information about almost everything-from hobbyist topics like dog training, to business topics like how to sell over the telephone, to self-improvement topics like fitness walking. The key is to find a responsive market and then package information that customers want in convenient forms such as DVD’s, books, e-books, CD’s, magazines, websites, teleseminars, webinars, coaching programs, seminars, and conferences. Watch a free video revealing how several info-marketers created their products and became infopreneurs at www.Info-Marketing.org.

As the President of the Information Marketing Association, I host a monthly coaching call for info-marketers who have questions and are trying to launch their infopreneur business. Here is a question from Scott in St. Louis, Missouri about what to look out for when booking meeting space at hotels. Since this is a common question, I decided to prepare an article about this challenge to help you.

There are a couple of the key issues that hotels are going to look for an attrition clause. Hotels are in the business of selling sleeping rooms and while they do have meeting spaces at hotels, the only reason they have that meeting space is so that they have the ability to sell sleeping rooms for the people attending the meetings. As a promoter, we want their space by guaranteeing the fewest number of rooms possible, however, they as a hotel, want to give their meeting space up only to people who will book as much sleeping space as possible. When you get the contract or when you engage in the discussion, the first thing they’re going to ask you is, how much space do you need and how many rooms are you going to book? And based on that equation, they’ll figure out if they’re going to give you any kind of discounts on rooms. And then when they give you the contract, their going to ask for you to book a certain number of rooms. If you don’t book that number, then you’re liable to pay them for those rooms whether anybody slept in them or not. Then they’re also going to ask you for a food and beverage minimum. This is the amount of food, coffee, lunch, and things of the like that you buy are all going to be factored into that original contract. Some of the provisions and then there is going to be a cancellation provision. That’s the third thing that you really need to think about.

Now in terms of the attrition, a couple of years ago it was difficult to get any hotel contract without a real aggressive attrition penalty in it. Now, that is less and less the case and I find that hotels are more open to negotiating those terms.

The other issue you must consider is the amount of the food and beverage the hotel will require you to buy in order to use the meeting space at the hotel. The thing that surprises most people, is when you buy say $5,000.00 worth of food and beverage, that is plus service charge and plus sales tax. That’s like another twenty-eight percent that you’ll have to pay on top of that. If you look at the contract and think, “Okay five thousand dollars food and beverage will do great. That’s all I have to spend. That’s my budget.” Well, that five thousand is actually five thousand minimum food and beverage plus tax plus gratuity, so that ends up being closer to $6,500.00.

There have never been greater, more diverse, more lucrative opportunities for everyone—experienced, successful entrepreneurs to rank beginners—in the field of information marketing. If you can name a topic, there is a market for providing information about it. People buy information about almost everything—from hobbyist topics like dog training, to business topics like how to sell over the telephone, to self-improvement topics like fitness walking. The key is to find a responsive market and then package information that customers want in convenient forms such as DVD’s, books, e-books, CD’s, magazines, websites, teleseminars, webinars, coaching programs, seminars, and conferences. Watch a free video revealing how several info-marketers created their products and became infopreneurs at www.Info-Marketing.org.

When it comes to creating an info-product, one way to find content is to use a public domain source. These sources, such as books, allow you to borrow their content and add to it for your own use in products.

As the President of the Information Marketing Association, I host a monthly coaching call for info-marketers who have questions and are trying to launch their infopreneur business. Here is a question from Ted in LaHoya about converting public domain books into courses. Since this is a common question, I decided to prepare an article about this challenge to help you.

When you approach creating an info-product out of a public domain resource, such as a book, I would start with an outline. If you are looking to translate that content into a more detailed home study course, you need to make sure you have the expertise or can bring in the expertise to provide additional details to the content you will be creating. Really the simplest method is to take the chapters of the book and create an audio program for each chapter. This is especially useful if you do not have any idea what the category is but you take the chapters because they are already organized for the book. However many chapters there are, you can make a chapter into a CD or you combine a couple of chapters into a CD and add some examples and you’re done.

Adding a workbook utilizing the main points of the audio tracks can add perceived value. If you wanted to give them a step-by-step process at the end to help them implement your product, then you provide them with six or ten questions they can use as a jumping off point. The fewer the questions you use, the more pleased the customer will be, even though they will implement less. The objective of these questions is to help them work through and the answers will help in creating whatever it is that your product looking to help them create.

If you need additional content, you can always bring in a couple of interviews to add variation. Feel free if you need a particular piece of content to get somebody on the phone, interview them for fifteen minutes and add that to the CD for that particular unit. You can do this by giving a small intro, “On this program you’re going to learn this, you’re going to learn that and I have a special guest and this is what they’re going to bring. This is their name that’s all part of this program” and then you jump into that CD. That way don’t feel like you have to give anybody you interviewed a full hour and you still get the additional content for your product.

My only caution these days is that more and more customers want things distilled for them. Customers are fairly dependent and although it’s our inclination to give our customers absolutely everything they could possibly need to know; very often they are looking for what are the essential five things they need to know are. There is some value in that as well. Rather than saying “let me expand the content here,” use instead a “this is how you get started,” program. In that case, you walk them through the main points. Instead of making this a twelve audio CD product, you make it four audio CDs and what it is giving them is a step-by-step guide to the things they need in order to implement this product.