7 Ways to use Drop/Sizzle Cards - Post 360

7 Ways to Use Marketing Dropcards That Will Get You 1-2 Reps Per Week

By Ray Higdon @ RayHigdon.com

One of my very favorite offline marketing tactics is drop cards. At first I thought they were cheesy but once I realized I could use them in many, many different ways, I completely changed my mind about them and decided they were very effective for building my business. Toward the end of this article I will reveal exactly how you can use them to get 1-2 new reps per week into your business.

This sounds great but Ray, what the heck is a drop card?

A drop card is a small business card that when folded looks like a hundred or twenty dollar bill. These have historically been used to “drop” on the ground giving off the impression that someone dropped money on the ground thereby getting unsuspecting passer bys to react in funny and interesting ways to ensure no one sees them score some money that was dropped on the ground. This article is going to talk about some ways to use drop cards that you may not have thought of. 

What Should Be On The Drop Card?

Well, if you are going to use these in a littering sort of way, like, throwing them on the ground everywhere you go, you do NOT want to have your phone number on them as you really don’t want to be spending your time fielding complaint calls. It is imperative that you have a good headline that will illicit interest and your website minimum.

7 Ways I like to use Drop Cards

#1 – In Planes

I try to get on the plane as early as possible and place drop cards in the magazine slot in front of each and every seat. In the sky mall magazines or whatever other literature they have. You have a captive audience that is forced to sit there for hours and just might pick up those magazines.

#2 – In Bookstores and Libraries

This is one of my favorites. I will set an hour aside and go to the local barnes and noble, books a million or whatever and them select books I think my prospects would read. For my primary business, people that read Ayn Rand, Glenn Beck, Robert Kiyosaki or really anything that talks about gold and silver is a prime target. I will place a few drop cards in each book. You can do this at local libraries as well.

#3 – Waiting Rooms

Another place where you have a captive audience, waiting rooms and hair salons. They always have magazines there, take your drop cards and place them in as many magazines as possible.

#4 – Restaurants

When you are done eating at the restaurant and putting in that tip (make sure it is a nice tip or this will not work at all!) slide a drop card in there, I have sponsored quite a few people that work in the restaurant industry. You may even preface the drop card by asking this killer question to the waiter or waitress, “Would you be interested in a side project if it didn’t interfere with your current job?” Who the heck would not say yes to that?!?

#5 – Toll Booths

Now you can also use CD’s or DVD’s for this tactic but the lowest cost way is to use a drop card. Next time you are pulling up to a toll booth, look in your rear view mirror and see what kind of car is behind you, if its a decent vehicle, pay for their toll and have the operator give the person behind you a drop card! The operator may even ask you for one!

 

#6 – Newspaper Stands

Another interesting one is buying a newspaper, pulling out all the newspapers and stuffing them with drop cards and putting them back in the stand. This one cracks me up, think about this though, if you were marketing for real estate, wouldn’t it make sense to put drop cards in all the apartment rental guides that are in these stands? Sometimes you have to think outside the box.

#7 – Get Your Team To Duplicate

Doing drop cards is a very easy skill to master. It doesn’t require talking to anyone and is very low cost. What if you got your entire team to duplicate this process? I am willing to bet that based on the results I have seen that if you get your team of 10-12 or more people doing this tactic, your business will go through the roof and then you get each and every new person to join in on the fun, remember, network marketing is not just about your efforts it is about getting your team to produce as well!

I use a lead capture system which also includes a toll free sizzle line along with my cards to capture the information from the leads the sizzle cards generate. For more information visit
http://keithabell.poweredfromhome.com/refer


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Today I Begin a New Life - Post 359

Today I begin a new life.

In my previous post titled “Blessings” I talked about a true caring professional network marketer that I had the opportunity to spend some time with recently. There are a lot of things that we discussed including a book that he suggested that I read called “The Greatest Salesman in the World” by Og Mandino. I’ve been reading that book and reflecting on what I've read. I’ve also been reflecting on what Keith Halls said and now even relating it all to all the books that I have read in the past regarding the network marketing industry. I just wanted to share some of my conclusions from my reflections. I guess the best place to start is share what I have been reading in the book and the conclusions I have come up with.

"Today I shed my old skin which hath, too long, suffered the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity."

"Today I am born anew and my birthplace is a vineyard where there is fruit for all.
Today I will pluck grapes of wisdom from the tallest and fullest vines in the vineyard, for these were planted by the wisest of my profession who have come before me, generation upon generation."

I want you to think about this metaphor just a moment.

Every person that has had major success in this business, and really any industry, they go out and write a book about what they did. These books are "the tallest and fullest vines in the vineyard, for these were planted by the wisest of my profession who have come before me." We then buy those books expecting to have the same success they did but we don’t. Then we get discouraged. We try to implement what the author did and we fail.

Think about this, is every single piece of fruit that is on a grape vine always perfect?

Is every single grape the sweetest, most tasty?

Of course not.

When you pick the grapes you only pick the best ones so maybe when we pluck grapes of wisdom from these vines maybe we are not really supposed to be looking at the whole plant just picking the best points from what the author has to say. Time and circumstances are different for each and every one of us. Maybe under different circumstances the author may not have had the same success that he or she did in the book.

Let’s continue:

"Today I will savor the taste of grapes from these vines and verily I will swallow the seed of success buried in each and new life will sprout within me."

So we are to pick out the best of what the author has to say and plant those seeds, and nourish them and continue to feed them. Then from those seeds we create success for ourselves.

"The career I have chosen" and we can insert any career into the text here such as in my case network marketing. "The career I have chosen is laden with opportunity yet is fraught with heartbreak and despair and the bodies of those who have failed, were they piled one atop another, would cast its shadow down upon all the pyramids of the earth."

"Yet I will not fail, as the others, for in my hands I now hold the charts which will guide me through perilous waters to shores which only yesterday seemed but a dream."

Those charts are the culmination of all the nuggets of information in all those books, all those “grapes of wisdom” from the vines “planted by the wisest of my profession who have come before me”

"In truth, experience teaches thoroughly yet her course of instruction devours men’s years so the value of her lessons diminishes with the time necessary to acquire her special wisdom. The end finds it wasted on dead men. Furthermore, experience is comparable to fashion; an action that proved successful today will be unworkable and impractical tomorrow."

We’ve all heard the saying that experience is the best teacher but pay attention to what was just said. Gaining that experience takes years to acquire and most people just don’t have the patience to wait years to learn something.

Not only that, just because something was successful before, times change. The outcome today may not be the same. Think about the early days of the internet. People made a fortune through email marketing. In the early days of email, we got so little of it we opened every email and read every word. Fortunes were made in email marketing then.

Today we don’t even open the majority of the email we get. I see that myself every day. I have people visit my websites requesting information. When my auto responder sends out a reply very few people even open up the email and read it even though they asked for the information.

The open rate went up drastically if I make a call to them first. However, I am now finding that success there is starting to wane. People fill out the request forms to get information that I offer but they don’t even put their real phone number on the form and they never open the emails. Just because a specific method works for a while does not mean it will work forever.

"Only principles endure and these I now possess, for the laws that will lead me to greatness are contained in the words of these scrolls. What they will teach is more to prevent failure than to gain success, for what is success other than a state of mind? Which two, among a thousand wise men, will define success in the same words: yet failure is always described but one way. Failure is man’s inability to reach his goals in life, whatever they may be."

The point that I have gained form all of this so far is fairly simple. We need to read about what others before us have said and done to achieve success. We cannot however look at what they say as a blueprint for our own success. What we have to learn are the principles behind their success not the actual actions they took. We need to take those principles and chew on them; digest them; combine them with principles learned from others and modify them to fit in our own circumstances today. That’s why books written long ago by people like Dale Carnegies have stood the test of time.  

"In truth the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. Thus the first law I will obey, which preceded all others is, I will form good habits and become their slaves."

So form the good habit of learning from others, adapting and applying the principles learned from them. Study their life. Look at the habits they possessed that brought them success. The things they did on a daily basis that others around them did not do then incorporate those habits into our own personalities and our own circumstances. We can’t all be Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs or any other highly successful person in the world. There was only one of them, but we can study their habits, the actions they took that lead them to their success. Then build our own habits modling there successes and avoiding the habits that held them back.

God, Forgive Me When I Whine - Post 358

Just wanted to share with you a poem that Keith Hall's shared with me:

God, Forgive Me When I Whine

Today , upon a bus,
I saw a girl with golden hair
I envied her, she seemed so gay,
I wished I was as fair
When Suddenly she rose to leave,
I saw her hobble down the aisle.
She had one leg; she wore a crutch
But as she passed, she smiled.

Oh God, forgive me when I whine
I have two legs the work is mine.

I stopped to buy some candy.
The lad who sold it had such charm.
I talked with him, he seemed so glad
If I were late, it’s do no harm,
And as I left, he said to me,
“I thank you, you’ve been so kind”
You see, he said, “I’m blind”

Oh God, forgive me when I whine
I have two eyes the world is mine.

Later, while walking down the street,
I saw a child with eyes of blue.
He stood and watch the others play
He did not know quite what to do.
I stopped a moment and then I said,
Why don’t you join the others, dear?
He looked ahead without a word
And then I knew, he couldn’t hear.

Oh God, forgive me when I whine
I have two ears the world is mine.

With feet to take me where I’d go,
With eyes to see the sunset’s glow,
With ears to hear what I’d know,
Oh God, forgive me when I whine
I’m blessed indeed, the world is mine.

Blessings - Post 357

This weekend has been amazing so far. Friday my son Cameron and I had the opportunity to meet a gentleman, Keith Halls, that has had amazing success in his life. It is really amazing, I shared one of his blog posts with my readers a few weeks back never realizing or expecting that I would just a week later have the opportunity to not only hear him speak live but to spend time with him one on one. ( http://AIMHighwithKeith.com/2014/05/the-9-rules-of-success-post-354.html  ) 

Keith started out life in a very poor family. Despite his meager beginings by 25 he made his first million dollars in the fledgeling computer industry. Then a few years later he made his next million in real estate. From there he was a founding partner in a company that went on to become a multi-billion dollar company earning him over 25 million dollars. At the height of his corparte carreer he stepped down to become a distributor in network marketing where he built an international downline of over 500,000 distributors earning him his next 10 million dollars. His first 9 months he really struggled. After 9 months of working 60-80 hours per week he had only earned $3000. He used to earn more than that in a day and after 9 months that was his total earnings in the industry. Within a year he was earning over $100,000 per month and even more importantly, he was teaching others to do the same thing.

Friday my 18 year old son and I went to a meeting where he was speaking. After his presentation the three of us spoke for about a couple hours and he invited us to come back saturday morning to the hotel where he was staying. Despite the fact that I worked third shift friday night Cameron and I went to the hotel saturday morning. We talked for hours. He shared with us the insights that he learned and what he did to go from earning next to nothing, $200-$300 per month in this business to earning over $100,000 per month.

He shared with me a book that he read by Og Mandino called the Greatest Salesman in the World (that I am reading as we speak). He also shared his "9 rules to Succeed in Network Marketing." He invited me to go through his legend series training program. We discussed in detail my frustrations. We talked about the steps I needed to follow to breakthrough the $1500 / month ceiling on my home busines income and to take that business to the next level to truly retire from pharmacy and build the retirement income I need.

I am flattered that he spent so much time with me. Many of the people in his position charge huge sums of money for their advice but he was very kind and gracious with his time. Truly a gentle-man that cares about others. I can not wait to plug my team leaders into some of the information that he shared with us. Even though I've been doing this business for a year and a half now I feel like I am just starting. Cameron and I are so excited to put some of what we learned to work with our team so we can bless others like we are being blessed.

If we haven't talked yet about earning some extra income then we really need to as soon as possible. I know how much most of us are strugling jsut to make ends meet. I can show you in a fairly short amount of time how you can be realisticly earning an extra $500 to $1500 per month without interfereing with anything you are currently doing. My 18 year old son is on his way to doing it and I know you can to. Just reach out to me and we will talk.

Why So Many People are Afraid to Act - Post 356

You want to reach out to someone about a product and about a business that in many cases can change the quality of their health or their life; to give them some cool benefits that's going to add value to their life and on top of that there's a business that you can introduce them to. Here we are about to go make a phone call, about to engage them in conversation but then we don't. It's like I'm about to make the call and then I pause and I don't make the call.

If you are ever struggling with engaging someone in conversation when you know you want to do but you just can't, you get stuck and you do everything else but make the call there's something going on mostly has to do with your beliefs around the profession and in fact almost all of it has to do with your confidence or your beliefs around the profession. I know I have.

If that describes you then these two videos may help. Network Marketing expert and trainer Todd Falcone discusses the number one challenge faced by a majority of people in network marketing, and more importantly...how to get past that challenge that prevents many people from taking action.

How do you spend your time - Post 355

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

by: Annie Dillard

So how do you spend your days?

I just made this video to share some of the statistics on how an average American spends their time over their life.

http://TimeFreedom.AIMHighForSuccess.com