Notes on the book “Sell like crazy” by Sabri Suby

You can find the book here

The main knowledge I take from this book is, if you want to sell something, do not just make an ad that says “Look I am selling”, instead, make a whole system. The system can be like this:

An ad target 3% of people that could buy from you, this 3% are the ones being ready to buy and looking for something. What about the 97% others? To them, you’ll have to educate them. How do you do that? By putting in place a system.

The first step of the system is to awaken their curiosity by citing your product/service in an article that revolutionize something. For Lesk, this can be “The new way gen z makes party” or “The new trendy equipment to organize parties at home”. More people can be interested just by being curious than the 3% ready to buy.

Thereafter, you need to have a system in place to be able to exchange an email against some free stuff. This can be ebooks, videos, training or so on. By providing something of value for free, you’re making your potential customer less and less sceptical to buy rom you and you educate her/him. Once you have the email, you can send him/her message to remind what you have to sell until this customer decides to buy from you.

Now, let’s see what I underlined:

– Marketing is the skill of putting a system in place to sell something.

– Invest in things that give you positive return, time wise or system-wise.

– The goal is not to have the best product, it is to have the best selling-system and the best ability to market your product.

– The market pays you for solving a problem, the bigger problem you solve the more you’ll be rewarded

– There is a Pareto law for what you’re doing and how productive you are

– The number one responsibility of an owner is to sell – A baker think he bakes but no, he must sell

– As a founder you need to develop your selling skills

– You can only control your work ethic so try to improve it

– All depends on how hard you work

– Even with the most advanced sales technique/funnel you can be ignored

– People don’t care about you or your product, they care about themselves

– The ability to write messages that sell is the most money making skill you can have

– Every thing is about the ability to craft killer selling pitches

– Good advertising is a salesman multiplied

– Giving information to people is the best way to make them buy from you (to take out the skepticism)

– You need a lead generator and a client conversion system

– If you can’t pay to acquire a customer you don’t have a business

– Advertising is an investment that makes more money than anything else

– Get inspiration from tabloïd titles

– You need to move the people not being problem aware to being full aware of their problem. Your prospects then need to become knowledgeable on a subject, the more they know, the more likely they are to buy. If you educate them they are more likely to buy from you.

– You should educate them, take a sales pitch, position yourself as the obvious choice and make them an irresistible offer

– To know more your customers, you should go on social media and investigate what they like, what they do etc. You can also use answerthepublic. Go to Facebook groups and pages, on Reddit and look what they write about.

– You should know where your dream customer hangs out, where they get information, what are their frustrations and challenges, what are their hopes, dreams and desires, what are their fears, what are their preffered form of communication

– People are looking for brands that make them feel good about themselves

– You need to identify the 20% of customers who can constitute for 80% of your sales volume

– Generate some High-Value content Offer like reports, ebooks, videos, cheat sheet etc. You must do that before even creating a landing page or a website. The goal is to generate value without asking anythign in return to gain trust and give knowledge. It shows that you can help your prospects.

– It is ok to educate your prospects in your ad.

– Long form copies are good as long at it is entertaining and engaging. People who will read it are the ones who will most probably buy from it.

– The job is not to sell but to create intrigue, this is why high value content is great as everyone else want to show how good they are and brag about themselves.

– People prefer to come to you to learn something than to be sold

– Your headline (of anything) should grab attention, touch their issues and be simple.

– The title of your HVCO should grab attention

– Headlines of gossip magazines/tabloïd are good examples of effective titles as they easily grab attention

– Put numbers into your headlines

– You’re fighting against porn and cute cat, you need to be special

– You can use shocking terms such as “Must”, “Alarming”, “Shocking” etc.

– Example of headling : x ways to …. without ….

– Type of HVCO: free consultation, coupons, checklist, cheat sheet, quizzes, videos, video course, toolkit, calendar, podcast, interview, live demo, tickets, email course, physical product, swipe file, inforgraphic, phone call, assessment, custom pricing, white paper, ebook, t-shirt, industry statistics, case study, “how-to” guide, pdf download, webinar, e course

– Don’t sell at the first time you meet your client, instead show him that you can provide value for free

– Grab their email against their HVCO

– You should play with your prospect curiosity using some headline with “how to” or “x ways to”

– Write a sale’s message before even selling your product or service

– To make the best sales’ pitch, make a spreadsheet with two columns: one for the feature, one for the benefits. Go over everything and spend some time on it as it will be very useful later on

– Your offer should be the tip of your sale message, it should be irresistible

– The better the offer the higher you can charge

– Your offer should keep the buyer awake at night

– Seven parts of a compelling offer : 1) explanation on why you’re making the offer, 2) establish a regular price and make it sound like a good value, quantify the monetary gains 3) put 3 different prices for having the decoy(?) effect 4) display the price and try to make them pay now 5) make premiums (aka free gifts) along with what they’re purchasing. Example of premiums = voucher 6) provide guarantees so that you minimize the risks taken 7) put some scarcity

– Anticipate and overcome objections before they happen (and then gather them when doing your research)

– You need to have guarantee. The client should not feel he is the only one taking a risk, you should let him feel also that you’re ready to take the risk to do the salesman

– A powerful guarantee can triple your sale

– Think of your guarantee as a proof that your offer is solid

– Study what the competition offers as a guarantee, check your strengths and play with them, be specific, choose a payback, put it in front and give it a name

– A landing page should have those 17 steps: call your audience, ask for their attention,back up your big promise, create irresistible intrigue, shine on the problem, provide a solution, show your credentials, detail the benefits, social proof, make your godfather offer, add bonuses, stack the value, reveal your price, inject scarcity, give a powerful guarantee, call to action, close with a P.S.

– People do not have a traffic problem, they have an offer problem

– When advertising on Google, you’re selling the click, nothing else, so try to catch your reader more than anything else, you need to be unique, you need to shock the viewer

– You need to differentiate between cold and warm prospects, cold prospects will need to understand they need this, through documents, experiences or so on, warm prospect have more incentive to buy

– Asking someone to buy directly is like asking someone to marry them at the first date, no one does that

– Thinking you can sell on google is ridiculous because you can’t sell something out of a simple ad like that. So your Google ad should provoke: Curiosity & Intrigue, shock, direct benefit, implied benefit, fear, vanity, self-interest

– It takes around 20 attempts to write the perfect headlines

– You can look at the type of content that performs well and copy it to be sure to produce good content

– The goal of people who write headlines for magazine, their only goal is you to pick up the magazine, they don’t care about the content inside, they want you to choose them among all the available magazines.

– You need to wonder what is going to grasp a busy person scrolling on Facebook to stop what he/she is doing. In that exercise, shocking/intriguing articles are really effective

– The article should be followed by an intro text, an ad image(without text) and a headline of around 15 words

– Once they came to your website, if you have done a good job with your landing page and grabbed their email, you can send a series of emails and videos where great value is provided.

– The magic lantern technique consists in provided enough value to your customer so that he trusts you. Example: 1) Create a 12-step checklist or a video 2) Make a new video on what we should do 3) Give an example of something, an action to take. By this technique, you will have them have you in mind if they need anything.

– Marketing is always an entonoir, you target a large part and get only a small percentage

– Sell like a doctor: Try to understand the pain and explain why your solution is the best fit for themselves. First doctors do a diagnosis and then they order a prescription

– Don’t sell to someone who’s not a great fit

– It’s like making a short survey before selling them something to see if they score enough to be a fit.

– You need to understand their problem, you need to ask them where they want to go (like where do you see yourself in 12 months if we use this), what are your motivation to achieve this, what difference will it make on your spouse.

– Your prospect needs to admit that he/she has tried to do it herself and couldn’t and that she is tired of it.

– Once you gathered all their feedback according to their pinpoint, formulate a plan to explain them your solution and how you’re going to help them go where they want to go. You need to prove your prospect you can actually help him/her. People are sceptical this is why you need to wait a bit and not tell them you can help them directly. It needs to be personnalized.

– The prescription should be told perfectly to sell them what you can offer them. You need to be confident. Explain how it can be transformed into benefits for them, focus on the en result.

– Close: Once you know your prospect is hot enough, ask them why they feel they would be good for your program so that the client will sell himself. Then say your price without hesitating. Have a set-up fee and a fast-action bonus (if they react fast you can make a reduction). Then shut up.

– A business should create an email list from day 1

– 1$ invested is 40$ in return for an email list

– one of the top digital channel

– Give you independence (Compared to facebook that owns your data)

– The same email can sell to 10 people as well as to 100 000

– Hard to get opened in the mail box as there is a battle for the attention. You need to have a good reputation, not a lot of bouncing.

– You need a good sender score

– When sending your email, make a simple headline as if it was a simple email, not something too complicated

– Test when it is easier to send email but my favorite is at 2pm

– Emails should be entertaining, every paragraph should push the reader to read the other paragraph. You can as well put personal information

– The design does not need to get over complivated with a lot of HTML, it shouldn’t look too commercial

– Talk to your prospect as if you would talk to a friend, don’t try to sell them

– Use short sentences

– Readers care about what you can do for them, focus on their needs and what they want

– Don’t ask to click or buy, tell them