the goose

In the “current economic situation”, everyone is hungry for business. Recent dinner parties have been filled with talk of friends and relations getting let go from various positions. Johnny Cash sang about A field of Diamonds and a colleague Peter Lawless is fond of describing the story behind the song. The original story of the field of diamonds was about a guy who traveled the world seeking riches when all along his house was build on a ‘field of diamonds’ – but he never bothered to look down and notice them. All very shmaltzy but there is a lesson there. If you are looking for work, you could do worse than to sit down and look at your own contact lists and think hard about who might be able to introduce some business for you. Here is a list of suggestions, some of them whacky, some of them not to get the creative juices flowing. You probably already know the enough people to keep you in clover through the coming storm. Just think how you could help them.

Sit down & look at your filofax/database
Who recruits staff for your business?
From your Christmas card list
Who is your child’s orthodontist?
From your school or college?
From your gym or spa
Who sells you sporting goods?
Who do you have lunch with?
Who is your best friend?
Bride & groom at the last wedding you attended
Who’s your vet? From your old job
From your church
From your club
Through your spouse family or children
From your old neighbourhood
From your civic activities
From your chamber of commerce
From your trade association
Who enjoys the same hobbies or sports?
Who is on your bowling or soccer team?
Who belongs to your local PTA?
Who is your children’s scout leader?
Who lives across the road?
Who is your dentist? Who cuts your hair?
Who sells you furniture or curtains?
Who moved house for you?
Where did you buy your spouse jewelry?
Who do you order flowers from?
Who books your travel plans?
Who sold you your car?
Who cuts your hair? Who waxes your legs?
Who teaches you yoga?
Who supplies stationery to your office?
Who advises you on marketing?
Builders or carpenters you’ve used
Who installed your alarm?
Who designed your extension?
Do you know a business advisor?
Who would you use for PR in your business?
Who organises events?
Who supplies your franking machine?
Who supplies office furniture?
Who sold a house to/for you?
Know any caterers?
Who is in your mobile phone?

Its a little disappointing to see how small my ‘twitter mosaic’ is. Not nearly enough to print off an put on a T-shirt but if I wanted to – I’d use Sxoop’s Twitter Mosiac tool. I wonder how long this took to put together? Go on – buy one.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

I had a hectic weekend. I spent it at The Think and Get Rich Bootcamp in Dublin. It was about €160 to attend and for that we got 11 world class speakers on topics ranging from writing a book to selling on eBay. There were two sessions in the morning and two in the afternoon. This seminar is pretty much a polar opposite of the upcoming Dublin Bizcamp. Each speaker would give about an hour of ‘education’ on something to do with creating an online income followed by about half an hour or a sales pitch. That was fine by me. The speakers really were excellent (for the most part) and even the sales pitch gave you some ideas.

The sales pitches were so good that even I had to hold on to my chair to avoid signing up to one of the many courses available. The upsold courses varied in price between €1,500 to €3,000. Most of them promised the opportunity to make tens of thousands of euros a month in online income. That does sound a little too good to be true which is what made a lot of people hold back from purchasing. Personally, I am finding it hard to keep on top of what I have, rather than looking for something new to get involved with. If I had seen someone offering training on setting up an affiliate plan I might have gone for it but as it turns out there wasn’t one on offer.

Anyway, if you would like to sell during a talk (which I don’t do myself), this would be the way to do it based on what I saw at the weekend.

• Establish how stinking rich you have become via whatever medium it is you chose (property, internet marketing etc)
• Establish that it wasn’t always that way referencing any working class background or dire financial story you have available to you.
• Explain your ‘lightbulb’ moment that made you realise that you didn’t need to suffer in poverty.
• Describe your meteoric rise (including picture of fancy cars and houses)
• Demonstrate the great deals that are out there to be had (using case studies)
• Make your offer, outlining at least 5 components demonstrating that each is worth at least the price that you will eventually offer your product at.
• Total up the total cost of each component which should come out at anywhere between 5 and 20 times your eventual offer price
• Discount that by 55%
• Then offer a special limited offer to anyone who signs up on the day for the first x attendees. x in this case would be somewhere between 12 and 40.
• Demonstrate that this is the only time you will be able to avail of this price.

Is this high pressure selling? Well – you could say so. On the other hand – it might just be the most effective method of driving sales. I’ve kept in touch with someone who has signed up for the events and they will be reporting back at the monthly Goose Forum. Lets see how much value is delivered.