The Law of Attraction: Intention Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction: Intention Law of Attraction: by Jason Li 2013 ©

As a sceptic... I originally thought the law of attraction was a load of rubbish...

In fact, an outright scam...

A way to take money off desperate people...

But I now believe it has worked in some ways.

Do you believe? Read on to see my story.

The Secret

I first came across this about three years ago when people and the media were raving about The Secret.

I thought, “Let’s be open minded and at least learn something new, even if I don’t agree.”

So here’s what I learnt.

In summary, if you believe good things are happening in your favour, soon your desires will be fulfilled, such as; you will be walking on a nice beach on holiday and feel the warm sun and the sounds of the waves; the universe will help you get there.

It’s based on vibrations.

So if you think negative things like: we don’t make many sales on a Monday or no-one calls our number anymore – guess what – the universe agrees and delivers your negative vibe... because it is what you want. 

(That’s right, time to gag that energy vampire in your office right now.)

“You get what you wish for”

You get what you wish for has been a known saying throughout time.

The law of attraction is mainly based on this philosophy, and you have to control your mind to ensure you only get what you wish for.

And it has happened to me.

I used to complain that I lived in an economic zone where jobs were low level unskilled  and low paid, so there were no decent graduate level jobs to apply for.

Maybe in a way I liked to prove this too.

Even though I desperately wanted a high paid graduate job, my negative vibes fed me low paid office jobs.

The Law of Attraction for more money

After managing and turning around a failing takeaway during the day as a challenge as an Interim Manager, while co-creating a board game each night and weekends, my attitude changed from looking for a low level job to looking to be a business advisor as I believed I was more than qualified to do so.

And so, not too long after winning a contract from Marks and Spencer to have 10,000 board games in over 200 stores in the UK, I got a job in a government funded agency and got to use my specialist marketing strategy skills.

I was unwittingly using the law of attraction.

I was focusing on what I want, mainly because I really believed I could help people, not just because of my Master’s Degree certificate, but because I proved it that I can both fine tune an existing offer (takeaway) and create a new product (board game) from scratch that beat many household brand name competitors.

So the law of attraction process started when I was ready to sacrifice in the short term an office career and go all practical in doing a business turnaround by running a takeaway, and sacrifice my nights inventing a new product.

“Money will come when you’re ready for it”

Now all this is in vain if you can’t get rich fairly quick.

We all want to have lots of money and free time.

It never happened for me in the past, I’ll admit that.

Again, I desperately wanted the money and the option to do what I want with my time.

Recently I heard a podcast and a very successful entrepreneur said a few years back he was poor and desperate to be rich. He was maxing on credit cards and working all hours, but his businesses were struggling.

And you know what... his mentor said:

“Money will come when you’re ready for it.”

He said he is ready for it. Of course he is; he’s desperate for it. But substantial money never came.

But now, money comes to him all the time, and it makes sense.

Law of attraction gratitude

Part of the law of attraction is gratitude.

Gratitude when you have an opportunity, whether it ends in a result you want.

So let’s say a prospect enquires. Even if they do not buy, be grateful and thankful (say thank you in your mind) that you had a prospect enquire, no matter what the outcome is.

This way you are telling the universe that you are thankful for what has been give to you.

It’s like when a referral has come from your network. It may not turn into an order. But you should thank them for the opportunity.

So if you think negative in a way such as: “I hate all these time waster callers.” Well guess what, the universe takes that on board and the prospects will start to reduce in numbers.

Now, at this point, for those new to this, it does all read a bit hocus pocus. I don’t blame you because I was in the same mind set for ages. So only you can decide to carry on reading this or re-read it again with an open mind.

Law of attraction leads to change

There are so many people who complain about unfortunate bad luck or how they just missed out.

So here is how the law of attraction gets you to where you want to be.

Remember above where I wrote that the law of attraction requires you to focus on where you want to be, the ideal result, outcome and feelings.

And also to show gratitude.

Well I have been focusing on the results of where I want to be.

In order to get there, I cannot carry on doing the same things I did yesterday, last week, last month or last year.

As you already know, doing the same thing leads to the same results.

And so I have to let the universe know I am willing to accept the changes to get to where I want to be.

It’s the only way my career and wealth can improve.

In order to take steps towards the results you desire, you have to say to the universe you are grateful for the changes that are presented to you.

If you don’t... then the universe believes you don’t want to change, and therefore you don’t want to achieve the better results.

No changey, no better resultsy: end up samey!

The law of attraction and this blog

So this blog was set up to give businesses ideas and tips to improve and get better results.

This can lead on to the human benefit of more free time as profit increases, more money to reward yourself and do more things in life.

But readers can only get to the results if they are willing to take a chance and try new ideas and new knowledge... to get to achieve a better result.

So, what would you like to attract for your business?

What would you like to change to improve your business?

What will you be willing to do to improve your business?

What would you be willing to pay if you could achieve a better result of overcome that nagging problem?

Please share this article if you think it will help or inspire anyone you know.

Further reading:

The problem of creating new products and services

How to generate more leads for my business

When your marketing is not working

Read more ...

What is ROI?: Jedi Return on investment methods for more profit

What is ROI?: Jedi Return on investment methods for more profit: by Jason Li 2013 ©

Are you a leader in your business... or a director?

Do you want to direct your business to more profits?...

Better conversion rates from marketing communication campaigns such as advertising, web site revamps, brochures, rebranding or email campaigns?...

Then here are some nifty ways to gain a better return on investment from your marketing communications spend.

How to calculate return on investment (ROI)

Why delay, let’s go through how to calculate return on investment

(return-capital)/capital) x 100%        = rate of return

(£110 - £100)/ (£100) x 100%        = 10%

So now you know what return on investment (ROI) is, so how you can use it to improve your business?

Rate of Return

Everytime you do something in your business, do you know the expected and actual rates of return?

Let’s say you do a promotion such as a 100 leaflets that are door dropped in your local area... what numbers are you expecting convert into sales, what numbers did you really get, how did you get to these estimates in the first place?

When you spend £2,000 on a website revamp, what rates of return are you expecting? Sure, the web site really looks great. Most web designers truly are fantastic visual artists. But I’m asking you as the boss and leader the hard question... what rate of return were you expecting from your £2,000 investment?

If you employ sales people, again you will have expected rates of return?

Add up all your sales efforts and marketing communication campaigns costs over the year and be truthful, what rates of return are you expecting?

Do your sales and marketing campaigns improve your turnover; improve profit margins and overall profit?

If the rates of return are low, like 500 cold calls to an order, even though you are certain you are targeting the correct target market, could it possibly be because the previous investment in developing your service and product was more than a year ago; so it means your offer is gradually not creating enough value for your target market TODAY?

When was the last time you added more value? How did it affect your rates of return after you improved the offer? If you can’t think of how to fine tune your product and service offer, have a look at the Goose Bump Effect ebook preview.

In fact NO... read on... you don’t deserve a free preview. You still believe that it’s not the product or service or your total offer that needs to improve. In fact, you want to spend more money on branding because it makes your ego feeeeeel guuud. So carry on reading.

Customer’s rate of return

So now you understand your own rate of return measurements.

In fact... it is almost certain you never purchased anything without trying to really estimate what you got in return.

So if you bought 1000 sales leads data for £100, you expected after all your expenses possibly £500 profit.

If you buy a nicer car, you want the hot guys/girls on the pavement to squint to see you through the window as you pull up at the lights. (Now that’s ROI because you want to be noticed by fit ones; yeah.)

And that way, my friend, is pretty much how your customers are thinking.

Your customers are trying to work out their rate of return from your product and service. (How many lovely people they can attract.)

Yes, you want the sale, more customers, more conversions, more revenue and more profit.

Yes, the customer knows you are keen for them to sign the papers, type in their card details, or send a purchase order... don’t you think they’ve ever been sold to in their life before?

But if you want better conversion rates, more money, more profit, less wastage of leads, to reduce the number of prospective customers who sign with competitors, and reduce the number of interested prospects with money to spend walking away and looking at other products and services to improve their business and lives... now is your chance.

“What sold well last year or yesterday might not sell as well tomorrow or next year.”

Look here dude. Either you keep your head in the sand, spend more on advertising, buying more lead data to give your demoralised and commission famished sales staff; get more stress, get more wrinkles, watch friends and family do better... Or, make that change to help your clients enjoy a product or service that is obviously of even better value than before.

Did these clients get a good enough rate of return on investment?

Marks and Spencer

I co-created a World Cup football board game as a freelancer that sold in over 200 Marks and Spencer stores. This included the research and game design to ensure it was in line with the demand of the market.

M & S wanted an exclusive football product to attract customers to their retail stores only.

On the Ball sold 10,000 copies in year one and was a top five selling product.

Competitors included: The Apprentice, Deal or No Deal, The Price is Right and Countdown.

No money was spent on TV advertising to promote the game, you could only know about it if you noticed it in the store. I had to rely on the methods in The Goose Bump Effect ebook to ensure that it hit the spot in terms of what buyers are looking to pay for as it sat amongst many big brand name board games.

My game only had one shot of being: noticed, picked up, the pictures and copy on the back read by the prospective customer... then it was either a) put back on the shelf or b) put in the basket. That my friend is the sales cycle. Anything else is delaying that decision of a or b.

Some AIDA magic:   A attention I interest D desire A Action

Boom!

It was positioned as a family game (a big point of difference – again explained in the ebook how to get this dead on to match what the market is demanding) and packed with unique humour and action cards for players to physically carry out fun tasks – no other board game around really offered much in the way like this at the time.

KashFlow

KashFlow was already a leading online accounting software to the small business sector.

Within 3-4 years about 300 accountants were recommending KashFlow to their client base after a launch of an accountant’s portal.

But sales growth had dropped off, whole sales teams would come and go, with new teams built from scratch.

I carried out some research to provide a 2^nd opinion.

To give you a picture, the main competitors included the giant Sage, Xero, Free Agent/Iris, QuickBooks and more.

Leading up to the year before I joined, KashFlow had won awards as a leading accountancy software, but had just missed out recently.

It was fairly obvious to see why.

The first thing is that other software houses upgraded their software much more quickly in the last year or two. The meaningful differences and value gap when compare to competitors was shrinking.

Secondly, when a prospect went on either software provider’s website, you see the same USP’s: easy-to-use, 30 day free trial, monthly payments, real-time... and so on.

How can any consumer choose?

So I developed a marketing plan based on adding value to blow other software houses out of the water. The plan was based on not just doing your accounts quicker, but tasks quicker too.

In case you’re asking, no I’m no technical guy, and was only a facilitator on this one. None of the integrations or upgrades were my direct idea... mainly because I don’t know the tech market.

I verbalised the philosophy that the software can follow as a theme to add value and differentiate.

The upgrades included MailChimp integrations for sending email campaigns from the same database, integration with DropBox, and click a link from the invoice facility to send your customers to your bank so they can pay directly online without you having to chase customers for taking card details. These examples would help the user enjoy more productivity through software automation of tasks. These were clearly outlined to prospective users as a USP for busy entrepreneurs.

Finally, a change to waive the fee charged to accountants for the portal brought about another 300 accountants to start recommending the software to clients within 3-6 months of taking away the fees. It only took five of the accountant’s clients to subscribe to cover the accountant fee. Given the fact that some accountants have several hundred clients, in the long run this would get over the hurdle of accountants worrying about the upfront fee. Once accountants had a client on board, the feedback was almost always good. So this got over a major deal breaker as most accountants would not pay a fee to recommend a software... so taking away this fee worked really well, especially as almost every decent accountancy practice has more than five clients.

Boomerang Couriers

One day as a marketing strategy business advisor I was sent by the enterprise agency to see a lad in Preston who had a courier business, based on volume discounting for pallet collections.

He was struggling, and he was desperate for help as a new business.

After analysis of the competitor landscape verses his business offer we found a very popular post office offer that he could improve on in both how he provided the service and price.

Now he could go on to spend money on advertising such as leaflets and within 6 weeks he had two new part-time staff on shifts handling enquiries and collections.

The ROI on Sales and Promotional Spend when getting marketing strategy right

So the importance of strategic demand marketing is starting to make sense now, huh?

Here’s a story:

Imagine if you just decided to spend thousands on a new brand concept complete with new logo, new company colours with an ingenious new brand concept.

Then your design consultants revamp your website... costing another thousand pounds (potentially).

And so your SEO, keywords and social media are now built around your new brand concept.

Yes, you’ll get some new site visitors, because new brings in adventure seeking types (a segment who constantly look for new).

Some may even buy your product because it hits the spot. Many won’t.

So you spend copious amounts of money on sales staff, telesales, field sales, sales managers and trainers. No-one has a clear cut answer why one month is great and another is not so good.

Can you imagine how much money, anguish and time is wasted in generating revenue using this method?

Compare this to a friend of mine who makes bespoke products. He follows new trends and adjusts to meet demand. Effort and costs are minimal: success and conversion rates are high.

Now picture this story of a tool supplier to artists:

This supplier could argue that because artists want to draw and use different colours, then their biros would meet their needs.

Does that read wrong to you?

(OK, the business will get lucky occasionally and sell a set or biros to complement his pencils or water colour paint pots.)

Yet many businesses operate this way.

That’s why thousands of prospects in your market reject you.

What if the product was adjusted to suit prospects demands more closely?

What would your ROI from sales staff and website conversion or SEO be now?

I’ll leave that to you.

Only you can say if it’s better to be in line with what prospective customers are seriously demanding to purchase.

(Or carry on improving and changing everything else from your desk layouts, to staff, to the type of carrier bags used at exhibition stands, to what the brand stands for... everything but the main product which the customer is paying for.)

The importance of Product ROI

Let’s say your product gets an ROI of 20%.

You spend £100,000 a year on business costs. The service elements to your product/package are also included; such as techies/developers or if you are lawyers then the law team.

And you earn £100,000 annually.

So without any promotional costs added, the product itself gets an ROI of 20%, let’s say from referrals.

So you earn £120,000 annually.

Now you want to promote your business to increase revenue. So you hire SEO, website developers, leaflet and print ad consultants, plus spend on newspaper ad space etc.

If your product is not aligned with demand, it is possible your total ROI on your product will now reduced.

Why?

Total costs go up; cash flow, profit margin and ROI for your product will drop down to almost negligible.

So if you spend £20,000 on promotion, then total costs would be £120,000.

But your additional revenue was only £10,000.

After the adding the additional costs, let’s compare with the increased revenue, say £130,000.

Then your ROI is now just 8.333%

So if you have a tactic of spending more on promotional costs and advertising to bring in more revenue, then this is going to become more inefficient for the business.

 

Can you think of businesses that suffered results like this? Businesses like Woolworths comes to mind.

On the flip side, if your product is what your target market is seriously demanding to buy, then any new promotion to prospects who were not aware of your exceedingly good product will likely buy.

Therefore, your ROI will be higher that the scenario before.

Ultimately

ROI is all about ROI on sales conversion for your product or service.

 

ROI is all about ROI for every product or service in terms of how it has been created to meet demand. If you make it and they don’t buy it, you have no return on your investment.

If you build houses and you get no sale from a viewing... Forget blaming the brochures, the lifestyle pictures and the reps uniform. Why does the HOUSE not meet demand?

No one here set up a business to virtually invest most of their money and time as an ad agency business managing art work and signing off Illustrator files.

No one here originally set up a business in order to go onto spend most of their time thinking about branding rather than filling that gap they saw in the market.

And definitely no one here from a trade started a business because they fancied becoming a cold caller and rejection-proof sales person.

So why neglect the real reason anyone is buying from you?

Are prospective customer’s sales objections about you or really about what your business can offer in terms of value?

If you truly want greater ROI, make sure you concentrate more effort on what you have to offer.

If you care for your target market and offer them exceptional value and differentiate the right way, and the prospective customer knows they will get exceptional ROI, your conversion rates have a better chance of improving.

Final words:

Please share this article if you have a friend who you might think a strategic demand marketing approach could help them.

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Scaling up your business for multiple lead generation

Scaling up your business for multiple lead generation: by Jason Li 2012 ©

If you are a small business and working all hours of the day, but want more revenue as your reward, then scaling up your business is the next step.

Here are some answers if you’ve been wanting to generate a few more leads or customers every week for your business.

In fact, from what I’ve seen... being good at lead generation is vital to business success.

To help you scale up in terms of offering more for new and existing customers...

So that they can spend more money with you without adding much costs to you.

Scaling up

Scaling up your business is the way you can keep increasing your business so that it expands and brings in more revenue. So I’m going to share a several secrets that I’ve seen – and best of all they are all practically doable without needing too much training.

This can either be done yourself, or by working with other people.

Once you have found a way to begin scaling up, you can just keep on adding more add-ons until your business grows to a size that is much bigger than it is today.

Scaling up small businesses with more lead generation

When you are self employed then you do absolutely everything in the business...

In fact, small businesses with two or three people tend to work this way as well. So it can feel really hard to even contemplate ways of scaling up your business.

So here I’m going to share some kick-ass leverage and lead generation methods for those of you who think it would make a difference – because you’re busy and you want answers now.

Now scaling up a small business is not easy. I have seen businesses that have only one product range or a small amount of portfolio services or products on offer and really wanted to expand. Their only solution at the time was to maybe sell more of the same. An example would be a retailer locating another retail site so that they can now go from having one shop to two shops.

Obviously, this is great if you have a thriving business and can look to get a new retail shop financed with money in the bank. But not everyone can instantly afford to get another site up-and-running. What if you have no money? How long will you wait to get the money?

There is an alternative. I have seen many owners implement ways of scaling up small business in ingenious ways without having to wait years for a new site. In fact, just copying how the larger businesses do it in the following way will do you no harm.

Using ‘leverage’ in your business

Imagine you want to lift a boulder. Remember when you were kids and you came across sitting on swings and you went back-and-forth to get really high up; well in ancient times engineers used systems like these to move boulders with levers and ropes so they could move huge heavy objects that no human alone could move.

We are going to use the same practical method of using a lever to allow a small business or self employed person to leverage their business: so that a small amount of input using leverage will create a bigger output.

Leverage methods

The first and most important is using the internet: If you sell products then find a business that sells products in a similar nature to you on the internet and work out how you can apply it. Stick with this as it’s more than the obvious stated so far.

Let’s say you sell cartons of juice in packs of three, then you can start by looking at other juice etailers. Look at all the various methods they use to scale up. Next, look at businesses who sell other low cost items too that might not be juice but in multipacks; it could be packs of three tennis balls. How did they do things which your business can use as a solution? Look at the packaging, the offer, bundling with other products as examples.

Let’s say you are a dry cleaner, how could you get more passing traffic to stop and drop-off and pick-up? MacDonalds and car wash places have drive through mechanisms. Could your dry cleaner have one side of the business for drop-offs and one side for pick-ups in the shop? Could you even have a drive through for vehicles to pass clothes through a window on one lane, and collections on another window? Could you join up with a petrol station or grocery shop?

Your take away: leverage other business methods to increase your lead generation

Digital leverage methods

There will be a business out there with the same problem that came up with an internet solution that you can implement in your business. Imagine having an ecommerce site that worked in generating orders and leads without having to put money down on retail sites, or not waiting for another site in order to expand the business.

Is it possibly in any way for you to use the internet to leverage what you do? Read on for more ideas.

Digitise products

Is there any way possible for you to digitise what you do? What? Say that again? What I mean is, can you create a digital version of what you do; your products or services? Chefs and restaurants can create ebooks on how to cook meals that sell on the internet, teachers can create videos which students buy as standard lessons, teachers can provide one-to-one bespoke lessons on Skype, and businesses can create audio files to download to offer advice such as accountants, business coaches or nutritionists. These will reach people who have no time or cannot use your services immediately.

What about other products? If you have toys then you might have vlogs – video blogs - to teach kids how to do more such as Lego videos,  for business people on how to turn your smart phone into a business tool, or a hedge trimmer into ‘Average Joe’s’ favourite sculpturing tool.

Don’t just think of your local market, think country wide; worldwide even. Just think, your business could have a customer lying on deck chairs around a pool in sunny Monaco now, and she is telling her friends about your digital product that she can’t get locally.

Your take away: When you digitise, you get more people finding ways to use your products, reach more people, and give customers the opportunity to share with other people who might find your offer interesting.

Partnership Leverage methods

Partner with other product suppliers: Let’s say you are a photographer, could you create a website that includes promoting the photographic studio you use for a referral fee, partner with a wedding planner, partner with a video recording service, or add on a gallery to sell your product and exclusively other peoples stock, or partner with a camera shop to provide camera lessons to enthusiasts, or partner with a walking group, or partner with a site seeing tour.

Your take away: partnerships give you multiple ways of generating revenue and more touch points with potential clients.

Cash flow

Digital products allows you to scale up without having to spend lots of money upfront.

 In partnerships, as customers use other partner products and services, you can be promoted to them as a trusted partner. Doing it this way might be of no cost to you when using partners.

If it really succeeds, then it also provides you great feedback, and much more revenue. If you have a channel (partner) that brings in plenty of new customers then you will know what this type of customer likes. So if your leads keep coming from a walking group and they want your photography expertise you can expand on this area.

So how much can you scale up your business to a higher level from these ideas and practical methods?

Will any new lead generation ideas bring you new streams of income and more revenue? Will ideas like these add value to your business?

If you know of any businesses that may find the information here worth reading, please Pay It Forward.

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AIDA Marketing Model: Sex Sells The Test

AIDA Marketing Model: Sex Sells The Test: by Jason Li 2012 ©

Sex sells is a long known myth in advertising...

But is it really true?

I’ve found some evidence it does...

And how you can apply this method to reap rewards.

The method to prove if sex or any other subject sells

If your business is struggling, what is one of the best ways to find out how to get more people interested in what you offer? It can be a problem as you search around and pitch to new people. They go “hmm” in a kind of interested-but-they’re-not-too-sure-if-they-are way.

The answer is to read magazines on your subject field, whether it’s from your local store or an emagazine.

Magazines tell you the current trends, and what your prospect is into, and what messages are swaying them.

And what is the best way to see what subjects interest your customers in each magazine? The main headlines on the front cover. Great copywriters spend days agonising over the right headline and subject to attract prospects.

Testing adverts

All the great marketing businesses are amazing at direct response marketing, creating copy that attracts buyers who read the copy and then like shopping-drunk-prospects go on to buy. The reason for this is plain and simple, if prospects scan the front cover and no-one goes on to pick up and flick through the magazine, it’s like prospects have said: “I’m not interested.” The death phrase of all sales people. No sales means no magazine business.

So the beauty of looking at magazines in your field is that people have done a lot of the testing and leg work for you. What sits on the shelves and catches people’s eyes are proven subjects that your prospects are interested in.

In order to get the best results, many businesses test the different subjects until they find a hot button that gets the prospect excited. Once you discover this hot subject, you then put it in the most prominent place to attract prospects.

Simply put, your most attractive subject headline in the right area of your magazine front cover generates sales.

So taking this methodology, you can apply this to your business.

Let’s see some test results

Without doubt, a magazine that finds this formula will keep on rolling out headlines based on the same subject if it works month-on-month.

So I’ve found two magazines that is focused on the activity of sex and improving sex appeal.

As you can see, it’s no coincidence that the best subject headlines are in the top left corner because most people look at the top and to the left in the western world at the start of a new page.

Click on the magazines below and have a good look at their front covers.

Cosmopolitan

Men’s Fitness

AIDA Marketing Model:

Marketing  uses the AIDA  model to take prospects from Attention, Interest, Desire and Action – where the prospect buys and becomes a customer.

Advertising, one of the main marketing communications tactics in marketing; uses the advertising AIDA model to generate interest. The whole point of advertising is to get your attention and sell you the desire to buy the product; not to entertain you with award winning art which is the biggest misconception sold to businesses.

So have a look at magazines covers. Do they pull you in. If they do, then look at your marketing. Is it just fancy art work that has no copy (writing).

I’ve been providing sales copy for a while and it’s always been the writing that people read that got responses rather than the graphics.

In fact you can test this yourself. Just put the best ever picture/graphic you can find with minimal or no copy on your web site, on a leaflet or in a magazine and check your response verses an ad with lots of writing on. You’ll see a big difference.


Can pictures get your interest. Absolutely. Will they persuade you to buy. Less likely. Words help buyers get over their sales objections in the most efficient and effective way. Always has done. For further proof, watch the charity events such as Children in Need and Red Nose Day, they all have written words and celebs verbally pitching people to open their wallet. The campaign can't leave it to just pictures only.

Your take away:

1.         Find the most important subject that will catch the eye of your prospect in your advertising.

2.         Put it near the top left hand corner.

3.         Test it for a few months with different headlines.

4.         Use the winning subject and headline.

5.         Pat yourself on your back for making your business more appealing to your prospects.

6.         Share this article with other people who might find this of interest.

 

 

 

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