CONCLUSIONES Y PROPUESTAS DE INVESTIGACIÓN

Submitted by: Randall Evenson, President of Evenson &

Associates at: www.eandaonline.com

This case study is about the US’’s largest non-profit religious organization, with over $380 million annual revenue.

Basic Background:

This 50-year old religious organization had a 5-year old religious video production and national product distribution division. The largest quantity of units they ever sold in a single year was 272 thousand units of the few video titles they offered.

Primary Marketing Goal:

Client now desired to dramatically increase their total video unit sales during the next three to five years by at least 10 million units cumulatively within the USA, even though they had never sold at least one million units all together, during their entire existence.

Additional Background Facts:

x This division’’s unit sales were not growing. The last two years unit sales levels had actually decreased each year from prior years.

x Their marketplace’’s primary distribution channel was a very fractured, unorganized distribution system. However, parent organization required this division to not use alternative distribution channels.

x Because this division was restricted to only sell into this particular marketplace (a market that only consisted of unique wholesale/distributor buyers) and whose entire market universe of possible customers was less than 280 thousand total, they had only sold 4,600 customers out of this entire market universe, during their entire 5-year history.

x This division only had production and marketing rights to out-dated video products.

x The religious video market itself was in a mature market phase.

x Division did not have an existing successful marketing and sales system.

x Division never had a positive net income fiscal year.

x Parent organization now required the division to generate positive net income each fiscal year forward or it would be closed down.

Final Results Achieved:

By exclusively using several Jay Abraham type marketing and sales systems, this division reached their parent company’’s goal of 10 million unit sales within 4 years from when I started helping them.

How We Did It:

Began evaluating their market situation. Results from these studies provided key information about: 1) their previous marketing and sales campaigns, 2) their distribution channel’’s sales operations and processes, 3) the overall competitive environment, 4) their average cost per sale and 5) allowable sales investment to acquire new customers.

Next, tested several Jay Abraham-styled direct marketing and sales campaigns to determine what this division’’s realistic marketing cost per sale level was per product sold by each marketing campaign. We tested three separate direct mail and two space ad lead-generation campaigns, three structured-referral programs, plus three telephone follow-up sales closing campaigns.

From these tests, determined that the optimum lead-generation systems and sales closing methods were: 1) a particular direct mail postcard sent four separate times (during a four month period) to targeted prospects, 2) a structured referral program where we got satisfied clients on a 3-way conference call to verify the benefits and results of program, having them speak with responders to our DM postcards, plus 3) a 6-step telephone follow-up campaign which together resulted in a tremendous sales closing rate. More about these results explained below.

One of the key reasons for these above tests, was to evaluate the optimum marketing systems given this clients limited financial resources. In order to achieve vast sales increases, when you’’re restricted to only using your organization’’s existing cash flow to capitalize such growth, it’’s very important to create the proper balance between the "ease of finding" new customers, versus the

"cost of finding" these very same customers.

The easier it is to find new customers, while having as low of cost as possible in finding them, then the better it will be for you to achieve your business’’ growth objectives. You’’ll benefit because you’’ll then be able to create a stronger cash flow level, which you can then reinvest into growing your company’’s sales.

From the results of the above analysis and marketing tests, developed the division’’s short and long term strategic marketing plans.

Review of Results Achieved:

We worked for this client during all of 1997 and 1998. During that time we created and

implemented several key marketing programs, which dramatically increased unit sales, revenues and new customer acquisitions, plus established this division’’s new on-going sales programs.

As a result, this division experienced a 667% cumulative revenue increase (more than $11.5 million), more than a 2,900% cumulative unit sales increase (over 3.25 million units) and more than a 980% cumulative increase in new customer acquisitions (more than 17,000 new wholesale/distributor customers!) within a 2 year period.

Exclusively using these Jay Abraham-styled marketing and sales systems, this division reached their parent company’’s 10 million unit sales goal within 4 years.

To produce the vast increase in new customer acquisitions, in early ’’97, we created and

implemented a powerful direct mail lead-generation system, which realized an average response rate of 9%, when the industry average was between 0.6% to 2% maximum.

During the same year, to solidify our new customer acquisition program, developed a special outbound Tele-sales program and hired the division’’s 23 outbound Tele-sales team to handle all outbound sales and service calls. This group used the sales leads that were produced from our direct-mail lead-generation system. Special training and sales scripts were used. This group achieved a closing rate of 87% on these qualified leads, when the industry average was between 26% up to 40%.

The following (used with permission) is a summary of the organization’’s performance since we were brought in, at the beginning of 1997, and their results three years prior:

Sales

($Millions) %

Change Unit Sales

(in 1,000's) %

Change New Customer

Acquisition Qty. % Change

'98 8.9 +242.3 2,800 +522.2 12,600 +168.0

'97 2.6 +73.3 450 +87.5 4,700 +193.7

'96 1.5 -13.3 240 -11.8 1,600 +3.2

'95 1.7 +13.3 272 +14.3 1,550 +14.8

'94 1.5 +4.0 238 +4.7 1,350 +7.5

Primary strategies and tactics used to create these dramatic results were:

1. Refocused their main product's market positioning to better distinguish it from competitors.

2. Redesigned and rewrote all of their marketing communication pieces (brochures, sales letters, sales videos, magazine and newspaper ads, PR kits, flyers, Welcome New Client kits, training manuals, etc.) to clearly articulate their Competitive Advantage Distinction over all competitors.

3. Developed strong direct mail lead-generation system that dramatically lowered cost per lead and cost per sale, while increasing the quality and quantity of leads produced.

Generated over 17,000 new wholesale clients (up from 4,600 originally) in 2-year period!

4. Used specially trained tele-sales team to follow-up on all leads and to close all new clients. Special training tripled closing rate over this division's prior levels and industry averages.

That’’s it!

Sincerely,

Randall Evenson, President Evenson & Associates, Inc.

95. Randy Diefel

--- Original Message --- From: Randy Diefel To: Jay Abraham

Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 12:01 PM Hi Jay,

I needed a way to get small business owners to advertise in my new publication. I was the 'new kid on the block' with a new media that they had not seen before. Credibility was an issue.

Risk Reversal to the Rescue. I simply gave them a 'better than risk-free' guarantee that stated they would be happy with the response from the ad or it was free. And they could keep the 'special report' as a thanks for trying us. Simple, but so effective. I went from nobody signing on to almost everyone signing on. By the way...

I only offered this guarantee to advertisers who would insert a coupon or an irresistible, compelling offer that was only being tested in this media, etc…… some sort of direct response mechanism that they could measure and see for themselves how the ad pulled.

Lots of added benefits have resulted. Some of the business owners asked me about writing all of their ads for them. Some of them asked for help with a marketing plan. So far, so good.

Sincerely, Randy Diefel

96. Raymond Young

--- Original Message --- From: Raymond

To: Jay Abraham

Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 1:34 PM Hi Jay!

I've bought your materials since around 1990, but haven't used them proficiently. Despite that, results were achieved. One of the ideas used was giving away books. You had suggested giving away the $20 hardback books. Well, I did that, however, I made sure I paid between

$1 to $8 for them through remainder sales. On most of them I made sure that the black "remainder" mark was not on them. There was a big sale once where every book was $1, and I bought a bunch. I am a Certified Public Accountant, so I bought books on finance and money management and saving for my clients and prospective clients to read. I did not measure the response precisely, but people appreciated the large value that I gave them. On the other hand, some people were not readers. So maybe out of $1,000 spent on $3,000 worth of books per year for 5 years, I got $15,000 of additional yearly business out of it from existing or new customers, or a 1:15 ratio.

Parasite marketing is a term I remember you mentioning. I started connecting with the attorneys and bankers in my area. I definitely learned that banks require financial statements, my specialty :~) I can't call any of us parasites, because I definitely tried to refer business their way whenever I heard of a client needing an attorney or banking services. With just my local bank, I made very good friends with the branch manager, and just from her alone we've worked on about 40-50 deals over a six year period. In fees that would be about

$112,500 additional business averaging $2,500 per client.

Testimonials: my brochures were the same as everyone else's, full of descriptions of what my firm could do for my potential clients. Reading multiple times through the years regarding using testimonials, the best I have kept in my marketing materials were for the IRS Offer in

Compromise Program, how I had one client pay the IRS $1,000 literally instead of $92,456, and the other client paying $500 instead of

$21,456. Some people have commented regarding how it brought them in to see me. The Offer in Compromise fees are between $3,000 to $12,000 each client. After including these testimonials, I estimate it added about

$30,000 to my business each year from $150,000/year. More importantly after I got them in as Offer in Compromise clients, I could also do their annual tax returns, financial statements, and other financial planning tasks, so it's more than $30K per year.

Backend: instead of just doing annual tax returns for clients, I started looking at what I could do for them throughout the year.

Against my database of clients, when me or my staff was not busy, i could review my checklist of services and see if any client needed them. Financial planning was something I added in recently, my newest case is where an elderly woman owning an engineering firm whose

daughter is also in the business. I suggested doing the succession

planning to her. Her business is worth $5,000,000 to $10,000,000. I think the fees for this alone will be $5,000+. This addition to my business is still to be improved since I am busy most of the time anyway. But so far I've added an estimated 10% additional revenue from this (about $20,000/year). It should be more.

Packaging: you mentioned bundling services together before, i have no idea where. one of the problems I have in my business is getting paid on time. I can definitely get 90 day receivables. From your ideas, I thought of packaging my time into 5 hour increments. Instead of paying me $75 to $150 per hour billed at the end of the month, I sold 5 hour packages for $500, saving the client around 15%. This sounds good to them. More importantly for me, sometimes the client would not use the time for months on end, resulting in a positive cash flow for me. Even better, I sold more hours per month to these same clients compared to the past, maybe 20% more. Meaning if an average client was at $700/year for 6 hours of me and my staff's time previously I would sell

$1,000/year for 10 hours of my time. I had to hire one additional staff accountant because of this.

Well there's some of the things I remember. These comments are true.

The measurements of improvement are my best guesstimates and should be within range. If you need anything else, email me at

[email protected].

Thanks Jay!

97. Ric Gordon

--- Original Message --- From: Ric Gordon

To: Jay Abraham

Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 6:13 AM Hi guys

Well I hope I'm not too late, but I had an experience in the last week that I thought would be great for your book. Sure, it hasn't brought in millions of dollars (...yet), but it does go to show that the principles Jay teaches are applicable to a whole range of life experiences - not just business. Anyway, on with the story ...

I am an Aussie who is living in London for a couple of years on a

"working Holiday". Now as you may or may not have heard the job market over here for temporary work (the only type of work I am eligible for under my visa) is very tight at the moment: a friend of mine who is a Recruitment consultant was telling me that they are getting literally hundreds of applications for a single position!!

Now, without blowing my trumpet too much, I have (what I consider) a pretty strong CV - I have a number of academic qualifications and have worked with some of the leading financial institutions in the world.

But I was getting absolutely nowhere by applying for positions that were advertised on the net or in magazines, or in the paper - I was literally sending off up to 5 applications a day and getting pretty much zero response. At the same time as I was searching for work I happened to be reading a copy of Jay's book called "Stealth Marketing", and in particular I read a section on the power of USP’’s and testing different headlines in sales letters.

I was getting so fed up looking for work through the traditional route so I decided I had nothing to lose by using this idea.

If you've done any traditional job hunting at all (or read any of the books on "How to find a great job" etc) then you know that the typical headline of your letter starts off something like:

"[Desired job title] Positions Vacant" ... or something equally as boring.

Now, the first thing I did was brainstorm USP’’s (I could test different ones over time) ¡V how could I differentiate myself from all the other people out there and at the same time provide a compelling argument as to why the prospect should hire me. One of the ones I came up with was the fact that the employer wouldn’’t be paying a huge margin to some fat-cat recruitment agency for basically doing nothing. In fact, I felt so passionately about this (I can really get going on what a waste of money those guys are!) that I thought I¡¦d start testing with this concept and go from there.

Next I thought about the risk proposition the prospect (a possible employer) was facing and how I could reverse this risk. The primary

risk to my prospects, as I saw it was that they would hire an

incompetent, lazy, stupid staff member (some people shine in interviews and really suck when it comes to the crunch) and then still have to pay their wages and even incur severance costs, regardless of whether the employee could do what they said they could. The risk-reversal

proposition as I saw it seemed pretty clear: tell them that I would only accept my wage if I did what I said I would do.

The next step was to draft up a couple of alternative headlines that were primarily designed to get the readers attention (remember your AIDC's?!) and incorporated my USP. Here are some of the ideas I had:

"Are you sick of paying exorbitant rates to recruitment consultants for temporary employees who could care less about your business? "Save up to 40% on your temporary placement - and great a more efficient,

effective service. GUARANTEED. "Don’’t let a recruitment agent waste your time with underqualified, overcharged candidates. I am so

confident that you will be happy with my work that I guarantee it.

The body of the letter didn’’t change so much from a traditional job hunting letter, although it was a little less formal, and really reinforced my USP, and elaborated on my risk reversal prospect.

The result showed up clearly ¡V I sent out 5 letters on the first day and got 2 interviews as a result (the same total as I got for 150 prospects.) Actually, one of the guys who interviewed me said he came across my CV because his secretary was showing my letter around the office, apparently she found my proposition so different to the normal job search letters that she just had to show somebody else. Anyway, to cut the story short I landed a job within 3 days.

So there you go. That's my story. And the lession I got out of it:

target marketing with a compelling argument and a risk free proposition is so much more effective than the normal "formal" introduction.

98. Richard Ebbs

--- Original Message --- From: Richard Ebbs

To: Jay Abraham

Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 4:47 PM

In April 1994 my sales were microscopic and declining, and I was near giving up, thousands of dollars in debt.

Then I attended a Jay Abraham Mastermind Seminar, and marketing became clear to me. Something that had apparently not happened before, even during my 2-year MBA at a top European school.

Soon I was orienting my communications to my customers' wants, instead of bragging about what I could do. I had a USP. I reduced customers' risk by offering an unconditional satisfaction guarantee: if you aren’’t happy we'll redo it, and if you're still not happy, you won't owe us a penny and we'll refund any money you've already paid us. Then I started giving away the first month's service unsolicited, as a way to develop streams of income from a business category that repeats every month for anywhere from 6 months to 24 months. Cost to sent the sample? About

$25. Average sale? About $2000. Average close ratio? About 50%. Wow!

I went from nearly broke to getting by in less than 9 months, and now have a successful, growing, sellable business, thanks to Jay's input. I grew 40% a year for 5 years in a row, and having maxed out the existing markets am expanding into 3 surrounding states and am adding 2 new product lines that I believe will enable me to double or triple gross revenues within 18 months.

Thank you Jay Richard Ebbs

99. Richard Gerson

--- Original Message --- From: Richard Gerson

To: Jay Abraham

Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 5:22 AM Jay,

Here is an approach of yours that I used several different times. You talked about it in your example of selling gold early on in your writings. You titled the approach Concentric Circles. I call it Refined Targeting. It is the same thing.

My approach was to take your concept of using direct mail and adapt it to my speaking engagements. I selected several related professional organizations and associations that had companies as members that I wanted to do business with. I then arranged to be a guest speaker at one of their meetings, either local, regional or national. Prior to the speeches, I researched my selected companies. During my speeches, I used examples that related specifically to those companies. Afterwards, I made sure that I spoke to representatives of those selected companies and got them to agree to further discussions.

My approach was to take your concept of using direct mail and adapt it to my speaking engagements. I selected several related professional organizations and associations that had companies as members that I wanted to do business with. I then arranged to be a guest speaker at one of their meetings, either local, regional or national. Prior to the speeches, I researched my selected companies. During my speeches, I used examples that related specifically to those companies. Afterwards, I made sure that I spoke to representatives of those selected companies and got them to agree to further discussions.