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I am privileged to personally know and work with direct mail marketing legend Dan Kennedy. The insight I’ve gained from this master of persuasion has influenced how I help my clients and how I run my company.

Recently, Dan shared valuable insight into how you can use analogy and drama to add magic to your sales arguments–an insight I’ll share here today.

Dan starts by talking about how magic tricks are used in advertising and selling and how people who understand this have a huge advantage.  

The first ‘trick’ he reveals is the SHOW’n Tell. You see this a lot in TV advertisements. A distressed homemaker scrubbing tirelessly will look up at the screen, exhausted and beaten down by the grim they’re trying in vain to remove from the sink. Then, a cleaning genie arrives with magic scrubbing bubbles, and voila! Like magic, the stains are gone.

If you know anything about selling, then you likely know the works of the leading authority in direct response marketing, Dan Kennedy. I need not introduce the man responsible for the No B.S. marketing approach that has shaped the careers of so many successful marketers and entrepreneurs, myself included. Dan’s contributions to the world of marketing and entrepreneurship are immeasurable.

Recently, Dan shared some valuable insight into crafting a persuasive sales presentation.

He talked about what he called his million-dollar sales presentation, which has sold over a million dollars of his products, specifically his Magnetic Marketing System (more on that in just a moment).

Dan goes on to discuss how when he’d speak to a crowd of prospective buyers, he already knew the main reasons they wouldn’t buy:

#1: They think it's not for them for their business.

#2 They think my product is just a book of letters because I show letters in an example.

#3: They think it's too complicated.

#4: They think it's too expensive.

#5: They don't believe the guarantee.

Is Your Shock and Awe Shocking and Awe-inspiring?

It was 8 p.m. on a Friday night and I out with some friends. We were sitting around a table and chatting. At some point, it became a bragging contest where we were essentially trying to outdo each other. My friends and I went back and forth for a little while. Finally, I said, if there was a sweet deal on the table tonight, then I could have more than a million dollars in cash in this house by midnight. Suffice to say that I won our playful argument. Cash to a business is like oxygen to a human. You lose cash and you die. It has nothing to do with your potential, valuation, the value of an intellectual property or physical inventory.

The mayor of a small town once wrote to Benjamin Franklin asking for a donation so the town could buy a bell for its town square. Franklin sent money with a note suggesting they forego the bell in favor of buying books for the town library. It is at the library we might find an answer to why so few succeed and why most fail - at anything, at everything.

Help! -I can't Get Out 0f The Box I Put Myself In!"

The fast food industry got the idea for drive-in windows from banks. I guess there was a McDonald's executive sitting at the bank drive-through one day who thought, "I don't think we can fit the milkshakes in these tubes, but..." Netjets, the leader in fractional jet ownership, now owned by Warren Buffet, owes its birth to the vacation timeshare industry. The microwave in your kitchen was not originally intended to go there; its original manufacturer, Litton, believed no consumer would buy it and built them only for restaurants. When was the last time you heard of Litton? What does this tell you?

That successful businesses live or die by cross-industry 'borrowing' of ideas, that inspiration more often comes from outside the box than from within. Ordinary businesses stay ordinary, their owners eking out only ordinary incomes - and working too hard for them - as long as those owners foolishly and stubbornly, mentally stay in their own tiny backyard. Breakthroughs come from bringing fresh ideas, found outside one's own business, in and applying them in new ways. You choose to limit or expand your income by the way you reject or embrace ideas found far afield from your present modus operandi and industry norms.

Most people don't like Mondays. This past Monday I can say I absolutely loved. 

Do you know the legend Dan Kennedy? He was my mentor, my coach, my friend. Unfortunately he became very ill and was in hospice. There was an outpouring of love and prayers and I truly believe that has true healing powers.

My mentor, Dan Kennedy, taught me to "go deep". While most people forget what they learned yesterday, I "go deep" when Dan Kennedy is speaking. There's a quote he says that I love, he says “I know the mind, like the parachute, is most valuable open." I agree with these words a 100%. You'll always find me in the front row, taking feverish notes, mindmapping what I've learned, and putting it all into action.

Dan talks a lot about super-achievers and what makes them different. They are not distracted; rather, they remain focused on taking the tiny steps and maintaining an accurate routine to achieve their goals.

Today I wanted to share with you something I pulled out of my Dan Kennedy NoBS Inner Circle archive. Would love to know your thoughts on it. Leave me a comment below.

As this is published, my guru and mentor Dan Kennedy is in hospice care. Here I am sharing some loving memories of Dan Kennedy at my dinner during No BS Super Conference 2019.

Here are my notes from Mail Box Millions 2.0 event in Cleveland, June 2019.