A direct marketing seminar by info-guru, the late Gary Halbert, called "THE PRINCE OF PRINT"

I have about 6 talks that I give that I can give almost in a coma.

You are about to hear probably the most disorganized, disgruntled public speech I've ever given.

I've been in self-publishing since 1968, and some people say that if you get 1 good idea from a seminar, it's been worth your money.

So far I have a hundred and 12 and I think Ted Nicholas deserves a hell of a hand for that.

Secondly, it doesn't make, put a dime in my pocket whether or not you buy his products.

Perhaps you should spend the next 25 years learning this stuff the hard way.

Because my motto is, you've got to be tough if you're going to be stupid.

So if you're tough enough, don't buy this stuff.

You know, $250, 000 and a quarter century later.

I've listened to the audience's questions, And I feel that they have been all intelligent questions.

But I also feel they were nearly all off the mark.

You people have asked about printing, you've asked about fulfillment, 800 numbers, merchant accounts, those aren't stupid questions.

But let me try and emblazon something in your mind.

In self-publishing and in direct marketing, if 100 equals success, 99.9 of that success is getting the sale.

And that's what all of your questions should be about.

There are 10, 000 people who can print your books.

There are 10, 000 services, or whatever many for that.

People in the phone book have solved those problems.

Never worry about problems that have already been solved by multitudes of people.

Now, I'm not berating you for asking these questions.

I'm just saying you're asking these questions out of sequence.

Because in The larger scene, the answers to those questions are of very little consequence, if you don't know the answer to the 1 big question, and that is how can I sell my product on a cost-effective basis?

I'm going to talk about how you sell your products, not how you fulfill them, not how you get them printed, not how you get an 800 number or anything.

I have made so many millions of dollars that I have become a legend in my own mind.

None of you should feel jealous about that Because I have the same capacity for keeping my money as a pig has for solving geometry problems.

I've got a big earning capacity because I have to, because I'm so stupid about money, but because of self-publishing, and even though I'm an idiot about keeping money, I still manage right now to live in Key West, Florida, in a beautiful home with a double-sized yard, a swimming pool, a jacuzzi, and a waterfall.

I drive a Cadillac, bought a Rolls Royce for my girlfriend.

I have 3 boats, 1 is the original Sea Hunt, 1 is a Riva witch, which some people consider the finest fishing boat in the world.

And almost all of that came from money that has been sent to me in the mail or telephoned to me with credit cards.

When I fly over the United States, I look down on the country with happiness, secure in the knowledge that 1 out of every 3 homes I have flown over has sent me or 1 of my clients that I got a commission on a check.

That's the only part about flying that I actually like.

If selling is the number 1 thing you have to concern yourself with, then the number 1 question you have to begin with, the bedrock is what is it that I am going to sell?

And Ted has offered you some really excellent suggestions on what to sell.

And I am going to give you some almost proof suggestions on what to sell.

What you want to sell ideally is a superior version of a book or other information product that is already selling well with superior advertising.

It costs too much to be a pioneer when the road has already been paved.

Now, How do you find products, books, I'm just gonna refer to books, but when I say books, think videos and all the other things.

How do you find books that are selling well through direct response?

You get letters in your mailbox, if you're on enough mailing lists, about them over and over, or you see them repeated in magazines over and over and over and over.

1 of the things, a lot of people think of me as a creative genius, and although I would be the last to deny that, the truth is most of my success, more of it comes from cowardice than it does from creativity.

And I'm afraid to try and sell diet pills to weightlifters.

I'm afraid to try and sell gain weight formulas to fat people.

I want to sell things that are already selling.

Now, I not only publish my own material, I also have an elite handful of clients that I work with in such a manner that if they let me choose the product, I guarantee that they will get a winner.

And I charge an awfully lot of money, and if I don't produce a winner for them in the first time, I have to do it on the second time, and so forth.

So I try and make damn sure I do it on the first time.

I'm not gonna read all of this letter because much of it's confidential, but I have a number of clients that I've worked with on this basis, and I spent hundreds of hours picking the product that I would sell for them.

I'd like to share with you my choices that I outlined to them in a letter I wrote Saturday, November 28th.

But I am gonna tell you about 8 of them, and they are all books.

1, the approximate title of this 1 will be what to do about arthritis pain.

I envision it selling for between 10 and 19 dollars, and there is a huge proven market for such information.

2, approximate title, how to pick up girls instantly anywhere in the world.

This is another proven monster product of which similar ones have been selling well for years.

How to negotiate and win no matter who you're up against.

And I went on to say, you know, every time I get on an airplane and leaf through the in-flight magazine of whatever airline I'm on, I see a multi-page ad for the Karas Negotiating Seminar.

It cost hundreds of dollars to attend this seminar, and I believe $317 to purchase the tapes of Sane.

It has been repeated so often for so many times that whomever running it must be worth a fortune.

Now imagine someone having read the Karas ad and then a few pages later, seeing another ad for a negotiating book which gives the caras and other techniques and much much more and selling for only 39 to 69 dollars.

Combine a killer ad with a low price tag, $19 to $99, and I think the golfers of America will gobble it up by the thousands.

27 secret ways to melt off body fat, hour by hour.

There's just no end to the market for diet information.

Latest facts on how to cure prostate problems.

If you're anywhere near my age, you almost certainly know prostate problems are a major concern to the majority of men after they reach 50.

Books offering this type of invo have been selling like hotcakes for years and there's no end in sight.

7, approximate title, how to flatten your stomach in the fastest way humanly possible.

The flatten your stomach appeal has been pulling well for over a decade, but I can't help but wonder how much more profitable it would be with 1 of my ads pulling in the sales.

How to get what The US government owes you.

This was my first successful mail order book idea, and like the social security ad in book, it has been copied profitably by many others, and I say they're like hyenas yapping at my heels in different variations.

Personally, I think it's time for me to get back into this game and create a super book which will be sold with a super ad.

This area is all the more enticing now since there are so many cars, boats, homes, et cetera that have been seized by the DEA and customs agents which can be purchased dirt cheap by a person who has the right info.

I don't think there's any mystery or any of you have any doubts about why I picked those projects.

They are never-ending concerns of people.

Get up in the morning and read USA Today.

How to give your golfer an extra 50 yards for Christmas for only $9.95.

They will spend any amount of money for any gizmo they think will take 2 or 3 strokes off their game.

Does a man's prostate have to grow into a problem when he grows up?

Would you raise your hand if you were male over 50?

Would you agree that there's never going to be an end for the market for prostate relief?

What, now, It is crucial for you to know what appeals work.

The most important thing Ted said in this seminar, if you never get anything else out of it, is that you don't sell people what they need, you sell them what they want.

And trying to sell something that's, trying to be logical about selling is 1 of the most difficult swims that you are ever going to make.

I'm gonna suggest another couple ways for you to get ideas for products.

1, Ted mentioned you should get the SRDS Consumer Magazine book, and you should.

Because when you read of a special interest magazine and find out its circulation, you know that there is enough people and they have captured the names and addresses of those people to be viable.

Like model railroading, you wouldn't believe the publications, you know how many model railroaders there are.

But you should also get the SRDS list book, and you should read the descriptions of those lists.

Just, it should be your nighttime reading.

What they do is they list nearly every mailing list available in America.

They tell you who owns the list, how to contact them.

They tell you how many names are on the list, what the average unit of sale was, and what the appeal was and what they bought.

And you will see lists all the way from a couple hundred names to 78 million names.

Now if you're gonna put your time and energy into writing a book, and writing is the single most difficult work in the world, Does it not make sense to write a book that's going to sell a ton of copies as opposed to writing a book that's only going to be read by your mother-in-law because she'd be too embarrassed to not to?

And so if you read the SRDS list book, for example, and you find that last year 475, 000 people purchased by mail a book on how to lose weight and only 1250 purchased another book on how to gain weight.

What are you gonna write your book about?

Gotta be tough if you're gonna be stupid.

So you should, of all things you should become is you should become a student of markets.

Now having said that, I am now going to talk about what I call selling formulas.

And what I have learned is the best way to work with these selling formulas.

What you really have to do is you have to get your selling presentation down on paper.

That is the first step to every great marketing campaign.

And then you have to translate that or permute it or reform it or adjust it into what I call delivery systems.

I look at my sales message as a nuclear weapon and the delivery system as the vehicle that gets it to the consumer.

And we're gonna talk about some delivery systems and ways to make, that I have found, through trial and error, to make those delivery systems more effective.

No matter what form of direct response marketing you get into.

You must understand the basic principles of superb direct mail.

Because if you market through magazine ads, The most profitable point in your whole business process is the day you get the order from the ad and send that guy a first-class letter saying thank you, reselling him on he made a wise decision and giving him the opportunity to buy something else.

If you sell by television, it's the same thing.

I could talk to you about direct mail for the rest of this seminar, but I'm gonna do a very condensed version of how I learned some very hard-won lessons.

The first thing I ever published, well, The first thing I ever tried to publish was called, something called, The Modern Homemaker's Budget Decorating Guide.

And when I discovered the world of mail order and direct response, I was so enthralled by it, I read every book, bought every course, traveled to the Library of Congress.

I would drive a hundred miles to buy a $10 manual.

I went to the library in Manhattan when I lived in Ohio and could hardly afford to get there.

And I studied everything and I learned everything these advertising experts had to teach me about magazine advertising and direct mail, and I started working in direct mail, and I followed all those rules, and I just lost all my money.

Many of you already know this, but there was a point in time I actually was spending utility money to buy postage, to mail letters, and we would be sitting in a dark house with no running water waiting for orders that never materialized.

And my wife, who is not my wife anymore, was a very stubborn pig-headed woman who thought that living in a dark house without running water was a sucky way to live and said, if you're gonna continue doing this, you better damn well figure out how to do it.

So I went down to my basement and I put myself in a mindset that I call ice brain, and I said, what would you do if you had to write a letter to somebody and ask them to send you money, and if they didn't, the government would behead you?

Then I thought, well, I'd learn some of these tricks I use while selling Sarko Peters door to door.

And very briefly, the way direct mail is supposed to work according to advertising agencies is like this.

You hire an expensive copywriter to write your letter.

You hire an expensive graphic artist to doll it up with expensive color artwork.

Then you have a very expensive brochure made.

Then you have an envelope with teaser copy written on the outside.

Then you have a letter shop assemble all this.

And because bulk rate postage is cheaper than first class, you have that postage printed on.

It gets delivered to the post office, postal employees being very ambitious and vigorous about the job and happy to get your mail, they sort that mail as fast as they can, they send it through the postal system, all the other people in the post office system are really happy to be dealing with your bulk rate advertising mail and the end courier hurries and delivers it to the prospect who's standing there with her whale box just waiting to buy another copy of a book like yours and she takes it, rips open the envelope, writes a check, and sends it to you, and you get rich.

If you do your mail like that, On the average, letter shops in America only deliver to the loading office of the post office 90% of the mail that they charge you for.

I'm not saying all of them are dishonest, I'm making a generalization.

There are some very good ones, very honest people.

So, you've paid for 100, 000 letters and only 90% of them have gotten delivered to the post office that's where they weigh them and they give the letter shop owner a receipt that says that he delivered 100, 000.

How do you get a postal employee to do that?

So now he gives you a receipt that says you've mailed 100, 000 letters, but you've only mailed 10, 000.

When you mail bulk rate, if someone has moved and left a forwarding address, your letter doesn't get forwarded.

On any given mailing list, it's almost always gonna be 7% dirty.

So now you're down 17% of your letters, because they didn't get forwarded.

In addition to that, 17% of properly addressed bulk rate mail that's obviously advertising gets thrown away from the post office.

That means you paid for 100, 000 direct mail sales letters and you've got 66, 000 of them delivered, if my math is correct.

And I know I've said this, some of you have heard this many times before, I never apologize for repeating it, it is the most important thing you will ever learn about selling by direct mail, you should write it down.

The people of America sort through their mail while standing over a wastebasket.

Of the type of mail I have just described, 75% of it gets thrown away unopened.

That means if you mailed 100 letters, the way the advertising agencies and all the experts teach you to do it, all the phony experts, you mail 100 letters, you'll get 66 of them delivered and 75% of that thrown away.

16 letters out of 1, 000 that actually got to the target and got opened.

It's my semi-famous A-pile, B-pile theory.

I believe the people of America separate their letters into 2 piles.

1 pile I call the A-pile, which is everything that is or appears to be a personal letter.

The B-pile is everything that's obviously advertising.

Everybody always opens all of their A-pile mail.

Most 3 quarters of all B-pile mail is thrown away unopened.

Suppose you like or dislike what I have to say here and you decide to write me a letter about it when you go home.

What you will do is you'll go home and type the letter or if you have a secretary she'll, you'll dictate it and she'll type it, you'll proofread it, sign it, you'll put an envelope, you'll write or type my name and address on the outside of the envelope, you'll take a real honest to God postage stamp, put it on there, and you'll put it in the mail to me.

You won't put any teaser copy on the outside of the envelopes.

Did you ever get a letter from your lawyer where on the outside of the envelope it said, here's hot news about your new lawsuit?

Did you ever get a letter from that lady you had a one-night stand with in Atlanta where it said on the outside of the envelope, honey you were great last night?

Personal letters aren't written that way.

Personal letters, the biggest reason that people open an envelope, what is it?

And if you say, here's how to get Time Life at half price, you don't have to open the envelope to find out what's inside because you may not know all the specifics but in a general way you know what's in that envelope.

A subscription pitch for Time Life magazine.

So never use teaser copy, never use bulk rate.

Now I'm going to tell you something that might surprise even Ted because it surprised a lot of big marketers.

You can use bulk rate in a way that will be more cost-effective than first-class mail and you shouldn't do it anyway.

If you use a buff colored envelope and a bulk rate stamp and direct impression addressing, The main thing you will do with that is fool the postal system into thinking it's first class mail and that they have to deliver it.

And sometimes, not too often, but sometimes, Using bulk rate in that fashion will be more cost effective than using first class mail.

Remember when I said on the average 17% of bulk rate mail gets thrown away?

He dropped 600, 000 pieces of mail and didn't get a single check.

All 600, 000 letters were in the dumpster behind the main Chicago post office.

Now, when you use direct mail, Sometimes it is very helpful to have an order coupon and a brochure with pictures describing what you're doing.

And I found out from a pornographer how to do that And still maintain the personal look.

I had a girlfriend that owned 1 of these private mailbox services, and 1 of her customers was a pornographer.

And he sent out letters just as I described, a pile mail, but he had a white sealed envelope in there and he said, contents.

He said, warning, do not open this envelope if you are offended by explicit pictures of naked women doing absolutely insane debauched things.

You know, that's a hell of a good idea for much more palatable marketing things.

So I still use brochures sometimes, I still use order coupons and so forth, but what I do is I put them in a plain white sealed envelope and say, please read this, please open this envelope after you've read my letter.

Selling is like seduction, but it's not rape.

And seduction works best if there's a little foreplay, if you go on a date and buy dinner and have a little wine or something, etc.

This is a cleaned-up version of how I usually present this Because I promised Ted that I would do that.

So I'm gonna try and make the point in a sanitized way.

But what I'm saying here is that it isn't just the question, which in that case is, will you go to bed with me?

And in your case, it's, will you buy my book?

It's just not the question, and it's just not how you ask it.

And the dummies in direct mail land ask the question on the envelope.

Before there's been any warm up, any foreplay, any wine, any meals, any nothing.

You know, I can't get many women to go to bed with me under any circumstances, but if I asked them before I first saw them, I think I'd be beaten bloody.

They're financially beaten bloody They asked the question out of sequence.

That's a very heightened version of direct mail make your direct mail look personal from 1 human being to another use first-class postage direct impression addressing and if you have to use brochures and order coupons, which are sometimes legitimate, put them in a sealed envelope inside the direct mail piece.

When I followed all the rules those people had taught me, as I said, I failed so badly my utilities were turned off.

When I followed the concepts that I just presented to you, I sat down and wrote a one-page letter, contained 361 words.

I used to brag that it was the most widely mailed letter in history.

That was before the guy who bought the company was at a recent seminar of mine and revealed there have now been 500 million of them mailed.

But when I was there, it took 40 women to make our bank deposit.

You know, that was back when making 100 grand a day was a big deal.

I can't believe I sold the company and blew the money anyway But I've been using that those techniques Ever since and they work And do I ask you do they not just make common sense?

Listen, I want to see everybody raise their hand who automatically always throws away their personal mail.

Now I'd like to see everybody raise their hand who routinely throws advertising mail around.

Don't ever let anybody talk you out of this.

That's 1 delivery system and how to strategize it.

Let's talk about another delivery system.

Another delivery system is print advertising.

And you are getting some of the best advice I've ever heard from Ted Nicholas about print advertising.

And what I'm going to say is very similar to what he's saying, and maybe it'll just reinforce it, or maybe it'll give you a slightly new perspective.

Here is the best thing that could possibly happen to those of you who have a book you want to sell.

This reporter works for the New York Times Book Review.

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Gary Halbert - Direct Marketing Secrets Seminar