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ARE YOU TELLING THE THIRD GREATEST LIE IN THE WORLD?
Back in Illinois in the 'fifties when I was growing up,
my parents entertained a lot. At some point over the
bourbon and the highballs the jokes
would start -- and they would fly thick and fast. My
parents were young and energetic and attracted their
peers.
Inevitably some wiseacre would say, "Do you know the
three greatest lies in the world?"
"First, the check's in the mail."
"Second, of course I'll respect you as much in the morning."
Third... well, the third one was so blue it just wouldn't
do in a respectable publication like this one.
Since then times have changed and so has the THIRD GREATEST
LIE. At last it CAN be revealed: "I'm making money online."
It's Time We All Came From Missouri
The amount of misinformation circulating online is staggering.
Every day most of us receive something by email or review
something online which just isn't true. It just doesn't
smell right, right from the start.
Ordinarily, the claim either involves health, sex or money.
"3000 people signed up in my downline in the last 4 hours!"
"I made $15,000 last month without ever once getting up off my
fanny."
"I created a multi-millionaire dollar business without ever
investing a penny of my money or breaking a sweat."
"I cured my cancer eating a bag of these potato chips, so help
me God!"
Oh, yes, we've ALL seen these incredible solicitations. Some
of us have been loonie enough to fall for them.
That's why we all need to re-assign ourselves to the Show-me
State and get serious about both reviewing the offers we receive --
and about doing business online the right way so we never have
to lie to get people to respond.
How To Use The Web So You Won't Have To Tell The Third Greatest
Lie -- Or Any Other Lie!
In advertising there's a famous line, "Sell the sizzle, not the
steak." What it means is: hype up your offer with a lot of fluff
so that people don't focus on what you're really offering.
People lie online because they don't have the one thing you must
have to succeed online: VALUE.
Companies great and small stay in business and grow because they
offer what people want.
We live in a Want Culture. Right from the moment we're born, we
want. We spend our entire lives wanting more and more and
more. That's just the way it is. Getting people to want is not
difficult. To be human is to want. Period.
Good people cater to these wants by offering VALUE.
Bad people cater to these wants by offering HYPE.
Thus when good people set out to market, they focus the
discussion on what the prospect gets -- the real, tangible,
beneficial things which the prospect gets by using what the
marketer is selling.
Bad people make one unsubstantiated claim after another.
In Alfred E. Newman fashion they say, "What me worry?", after
making yet another outrageous, unsubstantiated claim.
Their goal is to get the money and let the chips fall where
they may.
Understandably this strategy appalls real business people
who are in the business of offering value and building an
enterprise that lasts.
How common is this lying? All you have to do is open your
email in box any day; you'll see just how prevalent it is.
Recently, for instance, I received a newsletter with a huge
testimonial from a well-known internet entrepreneur about how
one of his distributors made as much as $84,000 a month. Since
I'm a creditor in the bankruptcy case of that distributor,
I found this fact most interesting.
I emailed the fellow and said that either 1) his numbers
were incorrect or 2) either he or the distributor was lying.
I said that if the numbers were wrong, the entrepreneur
should publish a retraction. If the numbers were right,
the distributor had lied to the bankruptcy court.
There were two interesting consequences of my message:
1) the entrepreneur said he wouldn't print a retraction
and 2) the distributor called me and in a remarkable outburst
of candor admitted that he'd never made anywhere near the
amount of money credited to him publicly but that he certainly
wasn't going to do anything to clear the record.
MY response? I filed all the records with the bankruptcy
court, including an affadavit of the phone conversations, and
blocked the distributor's bankruptcy. I also called for a
criminal investigation into what was clearly Internet consumer
fraud.
As this real-life case sadly proves, even when people are
confronted with the Third Greatest Lie, they keep lying, digging
the hole deeper for themselves.
Why didn't the entrepreneur just say his facts were wrong,
that he'd made a mistake?
Why did the distributor feel compelled to lie so outrageously
about his income when the records were so clearly available
to disprove his claim?
The real reason: both lacked integrity and both were selling
hype, not VALUE!
People Who Lie Are Quick To Use Mass Spam Email
Because "get rich quick" is part of our heritage, many
people take a Maynard G. Krebs approach to work: WORK IS
BAAAAAAD.
Their idea of marketing is to purchase 50,000,000 spam
emails, plop in an outrageous offer, then hope that enough
people will be duped before they are shut down and re-emerge
later in another nefarious guise.
Of course, this isn't how reputable online businesses work.
These businesses:
1) go for the long-haul
2) develop a website that's packed with VALUE
3) go through the necessarily laborious process of
developing an in-house email list
4) contact their prospects and
customers regularly
with an online newsletter ("ezine")
5) give these people all the necessary means of
responding, including email, fax, phone, mail and
walk-in.
Real businesspeople understand that no business is built in a
single day; that every day, every action, is important in
building up a business that withstands the test of time and
returns a predictable profit. They are not throwing the dice
with a single hype-filled email, hoping that they'll "strike
it rich" at the touch of a button, without ever having
to break into a sweat.
Real Businesses Understand People Want To TALK To You
When you're dealing with a hypster who tells the Third
Greatest Lie you're dealing with someone who doesn't want
you to get close, who doesn't want you to have important
follow-up information, and who flees rather than TALK to you.
When a hypster sends an email message, you can ordinarily
only respond by email. You're given no other way.
It's hype out, money in for the hypster.
No reputable business works this way. At Worldprofit, for
instance, we regularly send offers out. When people respond,
they get a PERSONAL response.
You see, we know that people are going to have questions
before they spend their money. We're prepared to answer
them, to work with the prospect.
We're not in the business of sending hype promising that
you'll be a millionaire before breakfast, then making it
impossible for you to verify anything.
The reason we've gone from being a home-based business in a
back bedroom in 1994 to being a multi-million dollar
corporation now is because we've anchored the company in
VALUE and made a conscious effort to work with the people
who are interested in the value we offer. This is why
Worldprofit has grown while so many other Internet companies
have crashed and burned.
DO YOU HAVE THE MEANS TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR PROSPECTS?
If you expect to grow your business, you must have the means
to communicate with your prospect. The hypsters don't bother
with these means; their goal is the "quick buck", not
mastering the long, sustained process that produces real,
solid, long-term growth.
To succeed online, you must have
* a domain where you post the value-oriented information
about what you're selling
* professional design. You cannot just throw information at
people and expect results. You need to present this
information professionally, using a professional designer
who is aware of the constant changes in online graphics and
design.
* a listserver so that you can communicate easily with
your prospects, customers, subscribers.
* a sales manager, so that you can get back to your prospects
automatically, until such time as they are ready to respond
and work with you.
* a traffic growth system. You must grow your traffic daily,
since traffic is absolutely indispensable in growing any
business, online or off.
As you review this list, how many of these vital tools do
you have, are you using?
The fewer you have, the more you must use hype to sell what
you're offering... the more, that is, you're relying on the
Third Greatest Lie to help you make sales... and the less
likely you are to build a reputable business producing solid
profits in return for reasonable labor.
We All Live In A Moral Universe -- Like It Or Not
It is easy to conclude, reviewing the state of the world nowadays,
that morality counts for nothing. Every day we are assailed by
stories in the newspaper which speed us to this conclusion.
We wonder: does character count for nothing? Is morality a
blasted concept? Is there any point wondering about right
and wrong?
The truth is, though it is easy to lose sight of it, the great
question for us remains the same question others have
wrestled with before us: how do we lead the good and moral
life? How do we do right in a world so often rewarding wrong?
There is something in each of us which, however hard we
run from the issue, keeps pulling us back, forcing us to
come to grips with the fact that we are responsible for what
we do and that it our responsibility to do good, to live
responsibly, to treat others honorably. It is the only way
to live the life worth living. For as people commonly say,
"What goes around comes around."
Stop Lying Today. Start Building A Reputable Online Business
Today.
If you're one of those people who has been trying to succeed
by selling hype. Stop it TODAY. Review what you're offering
and ask yourself where the VALUE is. If it's not there,
drop it TODAY.
If you've been trying to build a business on the Third Greatest
Lie, make today the day you resolve to change not only your
business but your life.
Start selling products/services of value.
Get the tools you need for online success, so that you can
not only communicate value but work with your prospects and
customers, helping yourself by helping them.
Stop trying to build an online business on a crap shoot,
staking all on one spam email transmission. Instead, build for
tomorrow by offering value today and expecting to do the
work that ensures success.
When you do these things, you can look the world in the
face proudly, knowing you won't ever have to tell the
THIRD BIGGEST LIE IN THE WORLD -- because you really
WILL be making money online!
About the Author
Dr. Jeffrey Lant is Co-Founder of Worldprofit
at http://www.worldprofit.com and author of some of the most
highly regarded marketing and business development books.
For details, go to http://www.jeffreylant.com
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