Archive for July, 2011
Answering the Question That Plagues Us All
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011For 6 years, select information marketers have been “by-invitation-only” subscribers to Dan Kennedy’s Information Marketing Special Reports and Info-Marketing Letters. Now, for a limited time, Dan has opened his vault to make these available to you.
If you’d like to find out more about the archives, visit www.DKArchive.com. Here is an excerpt from Volume 5, Issue 5 of the archives. I’m sure you’ll find it valuable and enlightening.
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I recently spent a day with a client from about 25 years ago—who I then charged $30,000.00 for a copywriting project—who I hadn’t seen in many years. He told me he had made millions following my advice and, by the end of the day, said he’d peed away nearly a million in the past year by not having my advice. He asked how much it would cost to work with me privately now, because it was costing him $100,000.00 a month not to. I mention this not to brag or solicit business, but as basis for the question that plagues us all: why do people who do incredibly well as a direct and acknowledged result of your or my influence still “leave us”?
If you are in the businesses of coaching or consulting for even a short time, you will see this occur. If you are in it for a long time as I have been, you’ll be able to fill a room with the lists of The Lost. I’m not talking about the many who come and go early as if through a swinging door. Most of these are merely frivolous, lazy, cheap or stupid or combination thereof, and never stay anywhere. Never do much. I’m talking about people who are around long enough that you know who they are, maybe have worked with them personally, and they have reported on successful and profitable achievements linked to your input and contributions—but wander off anyway. I’ve had three such Lost Ones return in the past month alone, one after 25 years’ absence, another after 20 years’ absence, another after nearly 20 years. All want my help right now, and I feel badly about not accommodating them. Apparently if you live long enough and keep the same phone and fax numbers (which I’ve taken great pains and gone to extra expense to do), they ALL return. But why these Lost Ones at all?
Some of it can be put on us. My bad, your bad. Maybe taking them for granted. Or not noticing their fading away early and doing something about it. Or simply being in too much demand to too many new people to care. Clients do come and go and sometimes return, and if you’re busy and you tend not to give it much thought, it definitely doesn’t matter during the best of times. It may matter a lot at some time, though.
Some of it may be emotional on their part. Students at some point resent their mentors and seek to assert their independence and not seem or feel as if they are being ‘made by’ someone smarter, wiser, more experienced. Their ego grows with their success but their memory of the source of that success fails. They want to be THE star, and our environment doesn’t give them enough opportunity; we are in their way; sheriff, this town ain’t big enough for the both of us. I’m not sure we can do much about that. (Personally, I work at acknowledging those who’ve influenced me, from whom I’ve drawn inspiration, to whom I owe debt, but I know others have shorter memories, by design or not.)
Some of it may be financial or irrational, in my cases, my fees, royalties and the expense of hiring me has escalated substantially, and I have priced myself beyond the reach or tolerance of a number of early clients. For some, the size and scope of their businesses and opportunities just don’t justify my cost, so that’s perfectly rational. For others, that’s not true; they can and should gladly pay my current rates, but just cannot bring themselves to do so despite proven value.
Some of it’s innate wanderlust. The 7-year itch, it used to be called with regard to marriage, when people actually tried to stay married. There was a movie made by that title, with Marilyn Monroe or Doris Day and Tony Curtis or, heck, I forget. The wandering eye. The greener pastures illusion. As familiarity sets in, seduction by the new ‘guru’ is easier. We can try to control this, much as, in the 50s, the stay at home wife was cautioned in self-help books and even a hit song by Jack Jones about the temptations the husband was encountering at work, and the need to seduce and surprise. In a bestselling book in, I think, the 60s, a sex/relationship guru of the time, Marabel Morgan, famously suggested being at the door awaiting his end of the day arrival naked with martini one day, wrapped in Saran Wrap and big red bow another. Seems quaint today. But the point is valid: for the old we must make ourselves re-occurringly new. I actually think I do a pretty good job of this, but obviously not good enough. At least I’m conscious of it.
But I am convinced that the only real answer is ownership of clients. Some lifers can occur “organically” by doing the best job that can be done at consciously, constantly countering all the reasons people have for wandering off—and I do have a fairly large number of lifers. And in this Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle™ business, we have a good handle on key factors in long-term retention, which include movement from Gold to Gold+; attendance at consecutive major events; seeking and getting recognition. But the only way to keep a majority long-term is to lock them up and make it so difficult and painful to escape they don’t even think about it. Others’ seductions go unnoticed.
This speaks to my belief in the current and future, major evolutionary change in the structure of our relationships with at least 20% of our customers—a movement from “pushing” to them and “consumption” by them to “integration” with them and “control of them.” Structures combining coach/consulting with done-for-them services that, as a practical matter, they cannot replicate themselves, training of their staffs, direct relationship with their customers, providing of their tools and technology, melded together so that their dependence is quickly set in cement and damnably hard to break. This is the “next evolution” of the “coaching-plus” approaches and business format I’ve guided so many info-marketers into, over the past 3 to 5 years. This is also a chief explanation for an increasing number of info-marketers becoming franchisors and my heightened enthusiasm for the franchising business. One way or another, the top customers targeted to be lifers, of the top info-marketers, will be so tied up in complex relationships, including forced consumption of goods and services and extreme dependence that they CAN’T leave. This is easier for the niche info-marketer to develop than for someone generic or mainstream; easier for most of my clients than for Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle™. Nevertheless, it is the future and the future needs to be now. A fast increasing number of info-marketers are inching in this direction, purposefully or accidentally, adding a piece of it here and there. Others are much more deliberately re-inventing their businesses to be there in toto. A few have leapt there. Many are resisting and procrastinating.
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If you enjoyed this excerpt, you may want to review the entire Dan Kennedy archive. It is available for a limited time at www.DKArchive.com. Every one of the 72 issues is packed with advanced, specialized, experience-tested insights into what it takes to succeed within the info-marketing business. Visit www.DKArchive.com to reserve your copy.
On the Further Development of the ‘Done-for-Them’ Business
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011You can’t ignore the ever-growing disinclination to serious study, patient development of skills, mastery of complex marketing processes and work, especially here in the United States. There’s no reason to belabor the point with abundance of statistical data and other evidence. It is reality. Nor are my ruminations about it as the eventual demise of America as we’ve known it relevant here. So I will shut up about that. Another time, another place.
I Am Their Leader. Where Have They Gone?
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011Personally, I think peoples’ behavior in general is getting scarier ‘n scarier. Less and less rational. Less and less earnest. Retention troubles in the coaching business are, to great extent, microcosm of this. In my consulting with info-marketers, I am often asked about this subject: what can be done to reduce drop-outs and improve retention? The frightening truth is, in many cases, a significant amount of year to year turn-over is unavoidable and incurable, and the business has to be engineered to withstand it, and you can’t obsess over it or be disturbed by it. Of course, fear of loss is one of the strongest motivational forces of all, so telling somebody to just accept their losses and make sure they’re doing what’s necessary to re-stock their groups is not particularly comforting advice. You’d expect something more magical from me. But in this case, I’m a little light on magic. I do think I have a pretty good understanding of WHY THEY EXIT and what influences turn-over and retention, and thought my observations on that would be useful to you in two possible ways: one, maybe spotting a screw you can tighten; two, coming to “okay” about what your retention reality is, why it is what it is.