531 – Should you do both?: Tom talks Promo vs Catalog

Episode 531 – Promo Vs Catalog
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and thirty one. Screw the Commute podcast whether you should do single promotions or have a catalog of products. That's what we're going to talk about today. Hope you didn't miss episode five hundred and thirty that was shopping cart abandonment that really sucks and cost you a lot of sales. So that episode tells you a bunch of reasons why people leave without buying and what you can do about it, so make sure you go and back and listen to that one. Screwthecommute.com/530. Always put the episode number after Screwthecommute.com. Hey, how about me sending your big checks or PayPal or gold bullion or silver, I don't know how you get paid, but get in my affiliate program, email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com. You can refer my products and services. We never get complaints, so you'll you'll be able to get money and pats on the back for referring me. Your people will love it because we take care of them and our products are great. Like Tony the Tiger? Great. All right. One of the the reasons I've had the great fortune of being successful is that I concentrate on automating things not fully because, you know, you have to have personal contact with people too.

[00:01:50] But all the mundane stuff can be automated, and I teach you how to do this in our free book that we give away. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Download the e-book and these are the techniques I use to handle. Oh jeez, sixty five thousand customers and up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers without pulling my hair out. So check that out. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app it. screwthecommute.com/app, and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take this with you on the road. Now we're still going strong with our program. It's a pilot program to help persons with disabilities get trained in digital and internet marketing through my school. So we've got a scholarship program. You can check it out at IMTCVA.org. That's my My school site internet marketing training center in Virginia. But its distance learning so you can be anywhere in the world and and take classes. So IMTCVA.org/disabilities, and then you can click on the Go Fund Me campaign. Anything you can kick in there is great, but I got another thing for you during this holiday season. I call it the triple whammy where any thing that you spend with me for training a percentage is going to go to the scholarship program. So you probably a ninety nine percent of the time you could get a tax deduction for training for your business, get good training.

[00:03:27] That's the first whammy is tax deduction. Second is good training. Third is you're helping out these people with disabilities. So beautiful thing we're doing for this holiday season and and on into the future. So check it out and get in touch with me directly. If you want some training and we'll figure out and I'm not an accountant or an attorney, but I mean, business training is tax deductible, so. So we'll try to structure everything for you. So you get a good tax deduction training and help those people.

[00:04:00] All right, let's get to the main event. Today, we're going to talk about doing a specific promotion. If that's the best thing for you or sending people to a catalog of your products. Which one is going to make you more money? Well, it's one of those things I think you should have both both specific promotions and a catalog, and I can't really, really tell you which one will make more money for you. But I'm happy to tell you about my experience, which is coming up on 28 years selling online. And I think you'll see which way I'm leaning very heavily that you should lean also, but you'll see examples of people that are going to make money more money on a catalog than a promotion and vice versa. Now, this whole topic of specific promotions as compared to a catalog of products kind of reminds me of when I speak. Many of you that know my speaking history, know that I watch every speaker before me at a large event.

[00:05:08] Now I do this for several reasons. One, I don't want to duplicate something, the other speaker said that's correct. In other words, I agree with their point, but the audience doesn't need to hear me repeating the same concept which makes them, which makes me look out of touch and that I'm wasting their time. I don't ever want them to think that another reason I watch every speaker is that I do want to nicely refute or add to something that they said. For instance, somebody gets up before me and tells you to delegate everything and only do what you're good at. Well, a lot of you've heard me say this. I think that's really stupid advice. So so when it's my turn to speak, I may say something like this. Well, you heard XYZ speaker tell you the delegate, everything you're not good at. Well, let me expand on that. I know. Let me take a sidebar here in my mind. Let me expand on. That really means that dumb ass can't even make their rent this month, so don't listen to him. That's what I'm thinking in my head when I say, Let me expand on that. Then I go on to say something like this. Many of the things that need done are super easy with a little tutoring, and we'll save you a fortune in money and time and give you a much greater chance of being profitable in your business.

[00:06:36] My program gives you all the one on one tutoring. You need to handle these easy things. Also, when you do want to delegate the task, you won't get ripped off because you will know how much it should cost and how long it should take to get done. The see, so so I'm basically promoting my program, piggybacking off of the dumb thing, the previous speaker said. Right. So that's the other reason I watch all the speakers. That was mostly those first two are mostly for you people that want to sell a lot at the back of the room and be a really great speaker. But here at number three, this is of why I watched the other speakers, this is the one that's going to apply to our topic today. I watched their sales pitch, and many times almost all the time, you'll see me smiling because. The speakers go into this gold, silver and platinum program, and I'm an audience watcher, say, but you know, I'm sitting in the back, I'm watching the speaker and I'm watching the audience. And I can see the audience getting more and more confused, every word that comes out of the speaker's mouth about this gold, silver platinum stuff. And and I see the audience like looking at each other and whispering, what was that package? And they're all confused. And then after the speaker thoroughly confuses everybody in the audience here, she throws in the diamond package and I'm like, I'm sitting back there almost almost giggling because I know I'm going to take home all the money.

[00:08:16] Why? Because I give them one clear deal join my mentor program, which blows away the benefits once they see all the benefits and of the other fake speakers up there. Or not join it or not. I don't care either way, it's not going to change my lifestyle. And boom, it's very simple. And then I come home with all the money. As far as I know, I've never been beaten in back back of the room sales at these big events in in 20 years. Right. So this is an example. This last one was an example of why I lean heavily towards putting only one offer in front of a person. Overall, it's the same way I sell online. I specifically email one offer for one product or service now. Yeah, I might put it in a Facebook story with a link to it or, you know, some other ways, but the primary is email. Now, that doesn't mean I don't offer an upsell to them, but only after they make a purchase decision on the main item, they only have one decision in front of them at a time. And I cover upselling in episode twenty two, so you go screwthecommute.com/22 and I got to tell you, folks, this adds an enormous amount of money to each promotion that I do. And there's a formula for it, and it would be highly worth your while to learn the formula and implement it.

[00:09:50] And I'm going to go ahead and say, you're welcome right in advance, because I know that formula will make you a lot of money, so go back and listen to episode 20 to. Ok, so now let's talk about my catalog of products. Now I've had the longest continuously running public speaking shop ever online. It's been going as long as I've been selling online, which as I mentioned earlier, is, I think, going on twenty eight years since the beginning. The first thing I sold was my wake him up book in physical format, we didn't have e-books in those days and then I sold my make them laugh cassette tapes and it went on from there, building and building and building. Now, check this out. I can't track one sail to where someone just tripped on my catalog and bought something. Ok? I'm sure after all this time that someone did, but there certainly weren't many. Now that doesn't mean my catalog didn't sell anything. It was a place where if I had an inquiry from someone who really wasn't ready to buy and didn't know what they wanted, I would send them there to look around. But I can tell you that people that don't know what they want and just want to look around, they seldom purchase, I mean, it's going to be a low percentage of closing on those kinds of people.

[00:11:17] You have to do a real sales job on them and channel them to a specific product again, remember specific, not general, and then sell them on that product. And I do that and I'm very helpful to all inquiries and polite and nice to them. And yeah, that's my nature. But as busy as I am, my patient wears thin doing that. All right. So what do I do? I continue to build my email list and do specific promotions because the percentage of people that buy makes a lot of money, and I don't have to talk to them, talk them into it on a one, on one on the phone, which is just too time consuming. If you've listened to me for a while, you know I'm crazy about email marketing. That's the big money, no matter what anybody tells you. That's where the big money is. So my list building, I got a best selling list building book. You can check it out at Screwthecommute.com/listbuilding. If you want to emulate this or improve the list you have, or even start a list. So so that's tells you all how to do it. Ok. So for me, the one time promotion through email is the main way I make money selling my products and also promoting affiliate products, that's another thing you can add on. Those affiliate products wouldn't really be in your catalog. Those are somebody else's products. And I maintain a catalogue just to have a repository for all my stuff and and even when I look at it, it's overwhelming.

[00:12:50] And we're experimenting with some WordPress plug ins to make updating the catalog easier. Prior to this, I've maintained it all manually and I and I have to admit I forget to put new products in, probably because I know there's little return from the catalog, so updating becomes kind of a low priority. And then, of course, I'll forget to do it when I should come back to do it, I forget about it. Now for you, especially if you're just starting or you plan to have a really large number of products, and I've got one client that is going to have 10000 products when they get their system all built and they'll probably sell more from their catalog because unless they do, a great job of segmenting their email list is very specific things that people are interested in. There won't be an easy way to pick one of those products and do a promotion for it. But anyway, you won't know what works best for you until you build your catalog and start doing specific promotions, do both of them. And I'm suggesting obviously that specific promotions are going to do best for you, but you won't know until you build it and test it. Now, the one thing nice about my method is that you can start with just one product and or service. I mean, it looks kind of stupid to have a catalog with only one product in it, right? So you can start even if you're a beginner.

[00:14:20] So if you want help learn how to do all this stuff, check out my mentor program. It's the longest running, most successful and most unique program of its kind ever. I have no trouble saying that, and I Triple Dog dare people to compare their programs to mine, and nobody will do it because mine just blows them away. I'm a crazy fanatic. How do you think I cranked out? What is this? Five hundred and thirty one episodes of this podcast? In the midst of doing all the handle on my mentees and running a retreat center and speaking and everything else that I do say so it's good to have a fanatic on your side. I got to tell you and my program is structured where I don't get my big money unless you make money. So that's the way I roll and kind of pissed off all the other fake gurus that were charging 50 or 100 grand up front of people and then then not even helping them. So that's not the way we roll here. So check that out a greatinternetmarketingtraining.com, and I will catch you on the next episode. Hey, we got Christmas coming up, so it's a great time to give and help out these people with disabilities. So check out that program. I got going and we'll try to get you a tax deduction for it too. All right. Get you on the next episode. See you later.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
Or join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com