This might seem obvious, but from what I see being offered in the marketplace, a lot of businesses overlook this crucial step.

There are a number of important reasons why you must have a quality product or service. First, selling a quality product substantially reduces returns and unhappy customers. Even with all the attention that's supposedly given in today's marketplace to creating quality products, there are many companies that experience return rates as high as 70% of all orders! Obviously, that's a financial disaster.

An inferior product kills repeat sales and referrals to another customer. This is another severe financial limitation, because repeat sales are where the true wealth is in any business. And referrals are extremely profitable since you have no marketing costs to make these sales.

There isn't anything more basic to your success than having quality products. Without quality products, you really don't have a business.

This is an extremely important concept that you must understand from the beginning or you'll seriously compromise your sales and profits.

When it comes to customers, it's essential to understand that there may be a wide range of customers you could potentially appeal to. But the customer group your business will profit the most from is the Ideal Customer.

What is an Ideal customer? Quite simply, it's a customer with these characteristics:

• A customer who wants your product.


• A customer who has the ability to pay for your product.


• A customer who has the authority to purchase your product.

It would seem that all three of these characteristics are obvious, but studies of hundreds of businesses proves this isn't so.

The key to controlling an ongoing source of consistently high sales is have credibility in your marketplace.

This might sound vague or mysterious at this point. But I guarantee that after you've been in a marketing-intensive business for a few years, you'll come to live by this principle.

I know of dozens of businesses that have customer lists of 2,000 to 3,000 customers. These businesses are making small fortunes year in and year out because they have built flawless credibility with their customers.

Think about it. Profits of $300 per year per customer comes to $600,000 on a list of 2,000 - and $900,000 on a house list of 3,000.

Once you understand this simple principle of gaining and leveraging credibility, you begin to see how easy it actually is to create a highly profitable business.

Here's another example. I have a consulting client who has produced exceptional results by leveraging their credibility. Our efforts together to sell information products to their house list of under 300 customers resulted in sales of over $175,000 last year - the first full year they were in business!

Take my word for it. A high degree of credibility with your house list is worth far more than anything else you could possibly imagine.

Whatever you're doing right now, I want you to focus your complete attention on what I'm about to tell you. I promise that if you master this one simple concept alone, you can easily double or triple your sales.

In today's marketplace, your offer is the most important component of your advertising. Or, put another way, the "deal" is everything.

I attribute the majority of the success I've had to my ability to craft an extremely potent offer. In the past few years, I've taken a very different approach than most "experts" recommend. It's this simple:

I always develop, refine, and perfect my offer before I do anything else with my ads, sales letters, or web marketing.

In fact, I'll take it one step further: I know this might sound overly simplistic - even too good to be true, but I'll let you in on the greatest marketing secret you could ever hope to learn:

You can virtually write your own ticket by becoming an expert at creating powerful, compelling offers.

Here's why: In today's marketplace, prospects and customers are saturated with advertising material. Television, radio, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, billboards, movie theaters, grocery stores, and many other sources bombard you on a daily basis with more advertising than you can possibly absorb.

What this means is that your customers are almost numb to advertising. It barely registers anymore.

The way to cut through this saturation layer and overcome your prospects' disinterest is to make an offer that is (1) so compelling, and (2) so believable, it stops them in their tracks.

Your offer can't leave anything to the imagination. Every aspect of it should be spread out in complete detail. It should be impeccably clear.

The Deal Is Everything