What Motivates A Purchase?
Over the last week I attended three very different live events, although they all focused on the same thing – making money.
The first one was Roger Hamilton’s introduction night, a free event he puts on as a feeder to his 3-day workshop and breakfast pitch.
I’ve heard of Roger before, but I had some misconceptions. I thought he was one of the older crowd of “legacy” business folk still doing the speaking circuit. I was surprised when he turned out to be a younger fellow, with a unique accent (he is a strange combination of Hong Kong plus Scotland).
On Friday I attended the Andrew and Daryl Grant Sydney workshop and did my usual two presentations, one on website flipping and the other on blogging. The Grants put on a four day show that is unlike any other event I’ve been to, and is definitely more suited to my style (I’ll explain why in a moment).
On Saturday I popped into a Christopher Howard managed event, that brought together some well known Internet marketers, both locals and overseas speakers, including John Carlton, Brad Fallon, James Schramko and Ari Galper. This event is your typical pitch fest, with two hour sessions for each speaker ending with a sale for a $2,000+ product.
The Psychology Behind The Sale
I’ve been to many business events, some that were free, some I paid money for as part of coaching programs. It’s very interesting to observe the different psychology behind each event, especially when it comes to how they go about making sales.
All three events I attended during the last week were technically free to attend. Although there are pricing structures, in most cases you can score yourself a free ticket in some way. The organizers of these events do not profit from the seminar entry fees, rather it comes from money made when a person orders a product sold at the event.
I noticed three key elements were used as selling tools at each event, however they were applied in different ways. Here is how I observed each of the selling psychologies at the events…
World Internet Summit Melbourne Recap
I made it to the end of the World Internet Summit (WIS) and wow, it’s been a GREAT experience.
I probably didn’t have a typical experience since I wasn’t there as a person new to Internet marketing and consequently spent more time talking to the presenters, but I want to explain to you first my take on why YOU would consider attending one of these events if you are new to Internet marketing and then I’ll throw in more tidbits about my experiences.
Opportunities, Education and Networking
My last article Beware The Allure of The Internet Marketing Success Story should serve as a cautionary tip on the mindset you need to have before entering an Internet marketing conference. Once you have that mindset you can attend these events, really enjoy and learn from the experience and leave with clear intentions rather than overloaded senses.
The WIS is four days. It’s a long event. I guarantee by the end if you watch every speaker you have enjoyed a huge variety of presentation styles and learned about many different ways to make money online.
My initial Internet marketing training occured throughout the late nineties and early two thousands where I was managing hobby sites and creating BetterEdit.com. It took a long time to learn the ins and outs of how people made money online and I can honestly say if I attended this conference back then, while I definitely would have felt the urge to buy every program (I feel that even now to a degree), I would have covered about two years worth of hands on training and experience in four days. That’s great if you want to speed up the learning process, but it also tends to overwhelm you.
What you will gain is a nice general awareness of how Internet business is conducted today. Things like capturing an email address, the sales funnel, product creation, viral marketing, copywriting, affiliate marketing, niche marketing, butterfly marketing, ebay selling, etc, are all in-depth topics that are covered in some detail at the event by each speaker. You will take a big step forward bringing the knowledge gap between wanting to make money online and understanding how others currently do it.
The big benefits come after the event when you go home and start implementing. You might begin by following the steps and training in a package you bought from one of the speakers, or by acting on the information you absorbed from the presentations. Whatever happens, if the event is the catalyst for you to start implementing and really learning through experience, then you have easily recouped the money you invested in paying the conference fee.
For the absolute newbies I’d say definitely go, it’s a fantastic experience, but be prepared to be overwhelmed. For the people who already know a thing or two about net marketing, it’s possibly even better. You still learn a lot plus you don’t feel the sense of over-stimulation to quite the same degree since the basics are not new to you and you get the chance to see how the big boys and girls make money by presenting at conferences.
The Highest Paying Job In The World
Lessons From The Rich Schefren Conference – Part 2
Education Through Observation
During the weekend as I attended the Rich Schefren conference I took notes. I’m not a huge note taker, I generally sit back and absorb and find that the knowledge rises from me in the future when required, however when you receive a lot at once I do like to take some notes for particular key points to really ram them home.
I also had one other motivation to take notes – I wanted to share with you guys and girls some of the biggest take-aways from Rich during the weekend, here on my blog. There are some great “hidden” tips in the advice below and I’ll have some more for you in part 3 of my recap of the conference coming up soon.
A Note About Criticism
I’m about to mention some criticisms that were circulating at the event as I talked to different people. As you will read in a moment I believe, while Rich won’t be super happy with how the weekend played out, he won’t be overly upset either. As he stated, this seminar was better than the first he did for his elite clients and no doubt the next will be even better.
Rich always practices what he preaches, and even though he may have not delivered exactly what he planned to over the weekend, I expect most of his clients will stay with the program and will continue to appreciate and benefit from what Rich offers (I certainly will). This in itself is a business lesson, which I will elaborate on in a moment.
I don’t want you to think that the problems that occurred at the seminar reflect on the quality of the content. Rich hasn’t nutted out all the kinks in the delivery of his program yet and to realise his end goal it will probably take several years – it really is something very innovative and ambitious – I’m not even sure if it possible. For the moment he offers great education and experiential lessons for anyone interested in Internet business.
I for one am very glad that I am on board with Rich and Strategic Profits now so I can watch the evolution of the company. The real value for me comes from watching what Rich does and seeing how his clients react and how the market responds. If you want to see how a guy can go from zero-to-six million plus in revenue in under a year, hire a staff to manage the business for him and see the exact marketing techniques to achieve this, Strategic Profits is ideal.
For me a lot of the core materials Rich teaches are not new because I’ve been studying business and online marketing since I first entered university and discovered the Web in 1997. It’s always good to have the foundations reinforced, to be reminded of what works, and I often need a kick in the pants to take certain actions, which a course like this provides. I certainly find the whole experience motivating, but in my situation seeing how Rich does what he does best – generates huge cashflow in a very short period of time and then constructs a business that runs without him – is the truly powerful experience.
For others, for example my mother – Zahava Starak – who attended the event with me as a guest, are still learning the keys to successful online business, so the program content is crucial, and that’s where the materials Rich provides through his online system are most beneficial.
I don’t know absolutely everything about business and every now and then Rich injects a nice little nugget of knowledge or an example case study that teaches me something new and valuable. For many these nuggets might be worth thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours of freed up time.
In the Beginning It’s All About You And Cashflow
Lessons From The Rich Schefren Conference – Part 1
I’m back at home in Toronto. It’s so crazy as I look out my window right now there is a huge snow storm, the largest this winter so far and it’s about -15c. Just a three hour flight south in Florida yesterday it was warm and sunny at about 25c. Amazing.
The Rich Schefren/Strategic Profits conference over the weekend was the first Internet business conference I have attended. It was a great experience and I want to share it with you here on my blog, especially for those of you who have never attended a conference but may be considering it, or for those considering joining the Strategic Profits coaching program.
I want to focus on lessons learnt from Rich and the whole experience, but since the networking and making friends was the big highlight for me I also want to make mention of some of the people I met, so I’ll start with that.
I gave out my business card with my blog address on it to many people over the weekend and I expect many of you are reading my blog for the first time as a result of bumping into me at the conference. I hope you enjoy what you find here and please subscribe to my RSS feed or email updates to stay up to date.
Rich Schefren and Mike Filsaime
Rich and Mike are two guys I obviously admire because of their achievements online and one of the main reasons I wanted to attend this event was to meet both of them. Mike has walked the path as an online marketer that I want to walk right along behind him, and obviously Rich is leading the charge in the business systems area. I’ve already learnt a lot from these guys simply by watching what they do and I hope to replicate their successes.
Rich Schefren, Yaro Starak & Mike Filsaime
