The Hard-Working Words Blog

It’s been a little over a week now since I got back from my first ever Armand Morin’s Big Seminar in Atlanta. This was the 9th of these twice-a-year internet marketing schmooze fests and it seems to me that Armand Morin and crew have refined the whole schtick down to a money-sucking science.

Now first off, I have to say that I have nothing but respect for Armand and the gaggle of marketing superstars who spoke at this 3-day event. Getting to suckle at the wise teats of guys like Joe Polish and Marlon Sanders is worth the (rather hefty) price of admission alone.

And honestly, it was a great trip. I met a ton of verifiably awesome people, pressed flesh with both the well established and up-and-coming in the internet marketing community, did a ridiculous number of free copy critiques (and ended up giving much of the same advice over and over — more of that in another post), and ate way too many complimentary brownies.

And I learned a lot, both about marketing, how to market to marketers and just what happens when you dangle free iPods in the face of a rapid, hyped up crowd:

Things I learned (in no particular order):

* Walking through a completely abandoned mall on a Sunday afternoon is enough to send even the hardiest American consumer into apoplectic fits. Kevin Hill (who writes copy for Russell Brunson) and I clung tight to each other like baby Kangaroos as we shuffled our way through “The Galleria” on our way out into the heat to find food. When even the Subway sandwich shop in a mall is closed up and quiet, you know you’re in trouble. The Galleria will forever be known to us as “The Zombie Ghost Mall” which is probably a nice symbol for a seminar built around selling stuff online.

* If Donna Fox’s piddling career as an author and credit millionaire ever dries up, she’s can totally rock it as a hypnotist’s assistant.

* If you really want to learn something and meet people at an event like this, you need to:
- Have a good, strong handshake.
- Be able to go without sleep for long periods of time.
- Be unafraid to consume large amounts of alcohol until the wee hours of the morning.
- Wear a nice shirt.

* Passing out cards and free copy critique vouchers to several hundred internet marketers is a great way to start conversations with folks. On the downside, if you pepper the whole seminar room with cards, the security at the event will eventually look at you disapprovingly with waggled fingers and Armand will be forced to get up on stage and say that no one else is allowed to paper the room. Live and learn. =-)

* Marlon Sanders is both brilliant and excitable. His “Chop It” tag line will go down in the annals of great pitch tools. By the end of Sunday night everyone in the room had chop, chop, chopped their way through the day, forcing every pitchman to move on down the road and lower their prices.

* Auditioning for Joel Comm’s Next Internet Millionaire is a real hoot. I laid down a couple of minutes of video telling funny stories and trying to be sincere. I don’t think my aud video has been posted yet, but I’ll point you that way when it is. You yourself should NOT audition because, well, I’d really like to go spend two weeks in Colorado.

* Content really is king and is one heck of a selling tool. I watched the bulk of the presentations at the seminar (and wore a hat the whole time. Armand and crew took a cue from Letterman and kept the room cold. My bald head was crying.) Now, the real way that the creators of a seminar like this make money is on the back end. Because of the way their affiliate program is structured, they get about $1000 for each attendee at the Seminar, much of which is spent on food, gifts (iPods and laptop computers, mostly) and the hotel rental. Where the real money is is in the back end. As a presenter at the Big Seminar you’re not just encouraged but are actually expected to go up and pitch, pitch, pitch.

Different presenters handle this in different ways.

Jim Edwards gave a nice little bow to the concept, ducking his head and saying “Ok, I’m going to start my 80 minute pitch now” but instead going off and giving some nice “Why” content explaining why internet webinars are a great way to reach your customer base. Sure, with 20 minutes left, he went into his pitch (which seemed to be a pretty good deal) but by that point it felt like he’d earned it.He was also funny as heck.

Joel Comm opened up with info about his spiffy new internet TV show and then spent a solid hour or more telling us “How” to use Adsense to make money online. Did he give away all the secrets? Nope. But he gave away enough good, solid info that I felt like I legitimately learned something just being in the room.

Some of the other presenters, though (and no, I’m certainly not going to name names) seemed to use their 90 minutes as little more than a hour and a half sales letter.

Now, being in the sales biz myself, I got a kick just out of seeing how they structured their pitch, how they positioned the “real” value of what they were selling versus the “special price for seminar attendees” and all that.

But when I lightly quizzed attendees on what they learned during the presentations most just grinned sheepishly and said “not a thing. Not a damn thing.”

Which I think is dangerous.

Just this morning I finished reading John Reese’s Rebirth Of Internet Marketing (which is worth a download and a read. You also might want to check out Michel Fortin’s “Death of the Sales Letter” which isn’t really about the “death” of the sales letter as much as its evolution.)

In John’s report (and John is a very smart and successful guy with great hair) he drills in the point that if you want to sell to someone in today’s over saturated mediaplace, you need to give them tremendous value and legitimately killer content.

Which means give away the good stuff so that you can sell the great stuff. Which is a principle I tend to agree with. If you’re on my hardworking words mailing list you know that I try to only send out valuable info that will either improve your marketing or get you thinking in an interesting way.

What bugged me about many of the presentations I saw (and again, these are folks I respect) was that they were almost to a T holding back the good stuff in order to get the audience into a rabid buying state. In almost every case I could feel the mood shift in the room as soon as the speaker started talking about what they were selling. Pencils went down. Eyes wandered. Daydreams came crashing in.

Now, I don’t have any scientific data to back myself up, but I’m willing to bet that the presenters who sold the best at the Seminar were the ones who gave it away; the ones who had legit content out on display and who’s up-sell products and coaching groups were positioned as the next step in getting a powerful concept to work for you.

Whew. That’s enough for now. I’ll log in later and throw a few pictures from the seminar up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 10:40 am and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.