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Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 8:06AM Rule #1 of good marketing collateral? Don’t say something when you can make them feel something. The surest way to a consumer’s wallet is through their heart, not their head.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 9:13AM Ad copy or marketing collateral refers to any material you use to market your product or service with one purpose and one purpose alone: to drive revenues to your bottom line. Here's how...
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 9:01AM Two seconds: that's how long you have to catch the consumer's attention in the marketplace. Don't waste it by saying something boring. Here's how to not say something boring:
Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 1:01PM Leverage is the art of using whatever you got to make people do whatever you want. Here’s how…
I’ve never watched “Shark Tank,” but it seems everyone who is looking for money to start or grow their business has. It’s my job to make people unlearn in record time everything they think they learned about raising capital from that show, and it employs a technique I’ve come to call “Shock and Awe.”
The first thing you need to know about leverage is this: never let them see you sweat.
I have to admit to catching a glimpse of the show in previews or as my kids flip through channels with the remote. It’s always the same scenario: entrepreneurs begging for money, offering half their company for miniscule amounts of it.
The problem is, these entrepreneurs haven’t been properly “Shocked and Awed,” with an understanding of their own Value Proposition, and that’s shocking and always disappointing to me. I’m here to change that.
If you don’t know, you have no leverage and if you have no leverage it's 'game over' for entrepreneurs looking to raise capital.
Your “Value Proposition” is a snapshot of your critical opportunity you dangle like a carrot on a stick using what you got to make people do what you want.
They got it; you want it. How do you leverage that? You make them think many other people want it too, and you’re walking out the door right now to pick up their check if you current room balks.
I not only told investors I needed cash--I told them I needed it fast to capitalize on opportunities I worked years to build, and they better get on this train now before it leaves the station.
In other words, I never sold my “critical demise” to investors, I always sold my “critical opportunities” to them.
When it comes to raising capital, two parallel universes (three if you consider unreality TV) operate at the same time in business: in one lawyers, CPA’s and accountants function in an antiseptic environment in cushy offices where every decision is made strictly by the books and numbers; the other is the real world, in which people are getting dirty all the time.
The secret to getting anything done in the real world is leverage, and if you want to make something happen you have to learn right now what it is and how to use it to get what you want.
The first thing successful entrepreneurs understand is this: No deals will ever happen unless you make one happen.
They happen because you used leverage as a tool to gain advantage over another, whether it’s money, the promise of success or even a threat. Raising capital is like a big chess game with all kinds of players who need to sense risk and imminent fear of losing in order to keep forward progress. Leverage is what you use to keep players moving forward.
Leverage means using any tool you can find to gain advantage over another, whether it’s money, the promise of success or even a threat.
Walk Away to Make a Sale
Sometimes the best way to close a sale is to walk away from the table.
Making people believe you don’t need their money will send shivers down the spine of even the mightiest Master of the Universe with ice-water running through his veins. Caution: If you’re going to use threat, you’re going to have to be prepared to follow through on your threat, especially when you’re playing against Masters of the Universe.
Anybody can come up with a Million Dollar Idea. Anybody can prepare financials. Anybody can write a business plan. Not just anybody can close a deal.
Even if I prepare entrepreneurs in every way possible with the documents of the deal, it will always come down to whether they have the courage to go into a room of smart money investors and use whatever leverage they got to make the people in that room do whatever they want.
Can Women Really do This?
You can’t teach leverage. It all comes down to nerve and you can do anything if you got enough nerve.
Leverage is the art of using emotions to make things happen, without ever really feeling the emotions. It’s understanding that closing the deal is a game, and emotions are just the playing pieces, not the players. It’s pulling strings, applying pressure and threatening to walk, not meaning one word of it. Whatever it takes to get the job done.
That’s why you have to protect your leverage at all costs, which means making them believe they need you more than you need them—whether you believe it or not—because it’s the honest to God truth.
If you give away your leverage up front by begging for money—it’s game over. Don't give away your leverage, especially for a sucker deal on TV.
Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 10:01AM I didn’t need to go out and create cold fusion or launch a billion dollar technology IPO, or Initial Public Offering of a stock to be traded publicly, to make a million dollars. All I had to do was this...