You've all heard some (including Fortin, Halbert and others) say "begin with the bullets..." that's what I'm doing with this copy for my "5 Ways to Double or Triple Your Business" seminar CD.

It's actually going to become a "lead generation" tool -- but I'm going to SELL IT HARD even though I'm essentially giving it ways to prospects.

Check out these bullets and let me know what you think... are they persuasive enough to get people to say, "Heck yeah I want that CD!"

Here goes...

 How to take advantage of “old-school” sleeping competitors and gain an unfair edge over them – they’ll be crying in their root beer while you quickly and proactively steal a lion’s share of their clients from under their noses
 The one secret, common denominator for success that all successful entrepreneurs and business-builders share – how to immediately implement this secret to create dramatic results in your business and your life
 Why you DO NOT need big, massive changes in your business to instantly create measurable advances and success – plus what elephants and mosquitoes have to do with succeeding in business
 How to cut through the clutter and stand out in a crowded, noisy, competitive industry – this secret is so simple and straightforward you won’t believe you haven’t thought of it before
 The secret to creating magnetic sales messages that grab prospects by their eyeballs and practically force them to respond
 The 5 catalysts for increasing your sales and profitability
 Why and how to stop “COLD CALLING” and instead get prospects to come to you, ready to buy, ready to do business and ready to refer even more high-profit clients to you
 The ONLY 3 ways you can grow your business
 How to keep your business from becoming obsolete – even when the market is changing every single day
 How to turn old, worn-out products and services into new offers that your existing clients and new prospects will gobble up and pay you a premium to have
 The number one best way for you to get skeptical prospects to try your product or service
 The secret of the 10-10-10 formula
 How to get $15,000.00 in business growth, strategy setting coaching – for FREE
 The little known secrets of getting 10,000 fearless sales people to go to work for you every single day – they won’t take time off, won’t ask for vacation, won’t ask for raises – and they deliver your sales message to prospects PERFECTLY… 100% of the time
 How to get the most successful and profitable business builders to tell you their secrets for growing a thriving business that spits out windfall profits like a vending machine
 The one thing you MUST do BEFORE you can expect to get the results you want and need from you business
 Why you need to get outside your own industry if you want to learn the best, most profitable and dynamic ways to grow your business
 How to make more money – and get more pleasure and fulfillment out of your business
 Why you could be the #1 reason your business is FAILING!
 The truth about past success – and how it could be PREVENTING you from succeeding now… and in the future
 How to know if your advertising is actually profitable – what to do if it’s not – and even what to do if it IS working
 How to get rid of limiting beliefs about your business – you may have gotten too close to your business to see the limitless possibilities for success, happiness and windfall profitability – this program will help you gain a new perspective for just how much your business is capable of providing for you and your family
 The vital difference between strategy and tactics – and how knowing the difference can multiply your advertising, marketing and sales results by 10-fold
 Why applying the NEXT BIG IDEA for business growth to your business might be a BAD IDEA
 How to create and implement marketing and advertising tools that create measurable results
 Why most entrepreneurs and business owners “get the cart before the horse” and actually waste a lot of time and energy marketing their business in THE WRONG WAY
 How to discover an endless arsenal of business-building weapons that will consistently deliver ever-growing profits from your enterprise
 A way to increase your sales by 10 – 20% beginning this week… just by making one simple change in your business
 How to leverage your existing client relationships to create a FREE-FLOW of new prospects, clients and sales increases
 How to get other businesses to refer their best, most profitable clients to you – these new clients will become some of your most loyal clients ever
 Three proven ways to increase the size or dollar volume of your sales transactions – this will bring you more sales for the efforts and will catapult your profits way beyond margins ever known
 Why customers don’t return – why they quit buying – and what you can do to change the trends
 An easy way to increase sales by 10 – 20% without adding a single new client to your business – combine this with the mind-blowing client acquisition techniques in this program and you’re poised for exponential growth
 How to get clients to buy more often
 Why being the cheapest isn’t always the best idea – and how you can actually turn “high prices” into an advantage over your “cheap competitors”
 How to work the same number of hours in your business – or less – and yet get more sales, productivity and profits out of your enterprise
 A simple way to reclaim 2 to 10 hours a week of your time just by making a measly phone call
 The secrets of incremental growth that can bring you a minimum of 33% increase in sales performance
 Your secret marketing edge – what your competitors don’t have – and how to discover it
 The secret marketing tactic your competitors know nothing about – and how to leverage it to create “atomic bomb” results in your business
 How one retail client went from just 2000 clients to nearly 8000 clients – in under 10 months
 How to “supercharge” sales at an established, stuck-in-the-ruts company
 The number one strategy that makes it impossible for competitors to duplicate your success
 How you’re probably spending 70% to 80% of your time DOING THE WRONG THINGS in your business – change this and you start making money immediately
 The only two reasons why customers will ever do business with a company
 Two ways of looking at the people who buy from you… choose the wrong “vision” and condemn yourself to fail… choose the right way and set yourself on the right track to growth, success and windfall profits
 Why your products or service is at risk of becoming a commodity
 How to get people to raise their hand and practically BEG YOU TO SELL TO THEM
 What clients want most from you – give them this and they’ll give you all the money you could ever wish to acquire
 Why you should NEVER just sell clients what they ask for
 The exact amount of money you’re leaving on the table every time you close a sale – how to change it and get more of what you want – and better serve your clients at the same time
 How to get prospects and clients to see you as “the only game in town” – even if your market is flooded with competitors
 Your most valued business asset – how to leverage immediately
 How to create the “perfect” written sales message that sucks prospects in and holds them until they willingly open their wallets and buy
 A simple, yet profound way to get 30% to 40% more prospects to buy from you – so embarrassingly simple you’ve probably overlooked it for years… even though you yourself wouldn’t buy without this in place
 A simple, inexpensive 3 ½ inch marketing tool that can bring you more referral customers and build stronger loyalty with your existing customers
 How to avoid the peaks and valleys and financial roller coaster ride – and create ongoing continuous income streams for your business
 The gutsy move you should make in your business
 How to target your ultimate buyer – and stop wasting money on marketing and advertising that does not work
 Why failure is so important to your success
 How to make your phone sales efforts pay 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times better results
 A 2-part way to make sure your marketing message is pulling the maximum number of responses humanly possible
 The number one best way to get new clients to try your product or service
 How to grow the fastest – implement this and watch your sales numbers skyrocket
 A simple, yet profound way to buy advertising that only costs you if it works – and it has nothing to do with the internet, google.com, pay-per-click or adwords
 Why you need to know your customers and prospects better than they know themselves
 How much it costs you every time you lose a client – and what you gain every time you acquire a new client… once you understand this, you’ll be amazed at how much more sense it makes to invest in client retention and acquisition
 How you could possibly be cheating yourself by underpaying on sales commissions to your sales people – plus an easy way to get salespeople to bring in 5-times to 10-times more new clients to your business… a proven motivator
 An easy way to increase nearly every sales transaction
 How to win back lost clients
 A systematic way to become the most respected, most trusted provider in your industry, market area or home town
 One simple promotion that brought a 2-person office an additional $37,000.00 immediate increase in sales – in just 30 days
 How to use three of your business cards to bring you a continuous flow of new clients and prospects
 How to dig into your storehouse of inactive clients and uncover hidden sales and profits
 How to test a sales offer without spending dime on marketing
 What you should do to keep your employees from totally screwing up your relationship with your best clients
 How to turn the telephone into a secret sales weapon – without ever making another cold-call again
 A 45-minute tool for turning your entire staff into a sales advantage
 The one thing that can make or break your business – hint… it’s right under your nose and you may not even realize it

OK... let me know what you think!

Way too many bullets for my poor mind to cope with.

Who is the target market?

Jane

I agree with Jane. They're powerful bullets but I stopped reading after the 10th one, scrolled down to see that there were many, many more and... decided to give up.

Now.... I never read all of the testimonial's in John Reese's TS sales letter either... and I still bought TS. Then again, the sheer quantity of testimonials in that letter was convincing in itself, while having a lot of bullet points may not have the same power.

JP -

I'm a big fan of bullets - and it's a topic that takes up more than a third of my "Secrets of Mouthwatering Marketing Copy" manual. However, there's something wrong with yours, as has been pointed out.

Try reading the bullets out loud - maybe you can hear it that way.

They're too densely packed. You have too many ideas and images crammed into some of the individual bullets. It makes someone's head spin with the effort to understand what you are saying.

Let's take just the first one:

“old-school” sleeping competitors: the idea of sleeping competitors is a good one, but when you add "old-school" you are making me think very hard to combine these two ideas.

How to take advantage of “old-school” sleeping competitors: That raised a very incongruous and unpleasant image in my mind of sleeping old men that no younger person would want to "take advantage of."

They’ll be crying in their root beer: This is another image that requires me to think and is also incongrous with sleeping old men. (If they're sleeping, how can they be crying?)

You quickly and proactively steal: Another head-banger of an image. What can it mean to "proactively steal"? This requires someone to stop reading and think.

Steal a lion’s share of their clients: Bringing in a lion is another new image that doesn't fit with the sleeping old men, the crying men, taking advantage of someone - any of the ideas you've introduced so far.

A lion’s share of their clients from under their noses: A lion from under someone's noses is another image that is hard for the mind to understand.

Some of these images are original, some are cliched, and many of them when combined create what writing teachers called "mixed metaphors" that produce an effect that is either ridiculous or mind-numbing. And there are way too many different images and ideas in such a short span of verbiage.

There should be AT MOST one image and two ideas per bullet. Those two ideas should form a juxtaposition, an intensification or a paradox. If not, then there should be just one idea per bullet.

Hope this helps!

Marcia Yudkin

Nice initial list, JP... but heed the excellent comments from Marcia.

I suspect you did these very quickly, sort of like a brainstorming session, just to get them all down. (That's what I do. )

Now you can go through and fine-tune them.

You have some that seem duplicative or start with the same words, such as:

" A way to increase your sales by 10 – 20% beginning this week…
" An easy way to increase sales by 10 – 20% without adding a single new client to your business... "
And two that begin with "A simple, yet profound way..."

And you use "secret" quite a bit.

There are a lot of bullets, and I think you can cut the number down. But once you put them into your sales letter, you'll probably break them up, right? So instead of one long list, you'll have two or three shorter ones.

I think you're off to a great start.

Thanks... this is helpful!

Bonnie,

You're dead-on about what I did -- in fact, I probably put them online way before I should have... but I was just trying to get some feedback (and I did )

Any-who...

I intended to break them into sections under "cross-headings" of parts of the CD outline and areas of interest.

I also GET IT... regarding what Marcia and others said. Probably the "read it outloud" suggestion was one of the best that's helped the most.

I'm working back through these and will hopefully have a better "format" and draft of them soon.

Thanks again, everyone... I continue to learn!

Great advice given here. I'd also like to add that in addition to breaking them into sections in various parts of the copy, you might want to try alternating them between bold and normal text, for readability. Also, I like to keep a blank line between each bullet. Also adds to the "white space" factor.

John

Thanks John!

Negative bullets can be very powerful. Fear is after all the great motivator.
However I think your negative bullets are too general to tap into the power of losing or missing out.

For instance: "Why applying the NEXT BIG IDEA for business growth to your business might be a BAD IDEA"

...just too general to latch on to.
However, something more specific like:

How your order page could actually be preventing people from buying -

makes me concerned about something very specific...and wondering if this is true about my order page.

JP

Make the second half of your of bullets into sub headlines

At random....
eg

How to turn old, worn-out products and services into new offers that your existing clients and new prospects will...

....Gobble Up and Pay You a
Premium to Have

See how doing this breaks up your bullets. And improves readability.

It's a great tip I discovered from Ben Settle.

cheers

Mark