This will serve as both a lesson and an update…

I’ll start with the update bit.

As you probably know, I closed registration to my BTMSinsiders training library on December 31st.  Since its inception over a year before, I’d significantly undercharged for the monthly membership.  And I finally reached that point where I couldn’t put off doing something about it.  So I shut down registrations, and when I reopen it will be at a higher price.

As it stands right now, I’m immersed in multiple client launches and working on getting a publisher to manage many aspects of that business.   So I expect it will be at least February before I relaunch.

And at that time, I’m expecting to run a very short-term offer for those who missed that original deadline.  Not to get in at the $37 price, as that would be disrespectful to everyone who did take advantage of that offer and got in before the deadline.  But at some price above $37 and below the new membership price.  So that if you’re now in a position where you’re regretting missing it, that you’re able to get at least some advantageous pricing.

Then when that is gone, it will be gone.  And the new price will be in effect.

Which leads me to today’s lesson…

Deadlines must be held sacred and be inviolable…

The internet did some really interesting things, in terms of our ability to put messaging in front of our customers.  Some great.  Some of questionable value.

One of those things that I consider to be of questionable value is the ability to dynamically manipulate dates that appear in our marketing.

Early on in the days of internet marketing, you could simply make an offer feel more urgent by inserting today’s date into the copy dynamically.  So that any time someone landed on a sales page, they saw that they had to respond TODAY to get the offer.

Some merchants still play these tricks.

In the short term, a trick like this can give you an advantage.  It will bump response, and you’ll be convinced you’re a marketing genius.  But in the long run, any advantage to this kind of trickery will diminish, as it becomes more commonplace and expected.

If every website you — the intelligent, discerning consumer — visit has a deadline of “today,” pretty soon you’ll start to suspect that maybe that deadline isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

And when you start to visit some of those websites tomorrow and the day after, and the deadline remains “today” — or even the current date — to get the exact same offer, your suspicions will be confirmed.  Those merchants will begin to lose your trust.  You’ll believe them less and less.  And that won’t just apply to deadlines, but to every other thing that they do.

You must maintain credibility and believability with your prospects if you want to influence them.

And so if you set a deadline, you must stick to it — even if it means turning away money!

I operate my business on a set of core values.  Among those, is…

“Long-view: We act in ways to foster 12-year or 12-decade relationships, not 12-minute, 12-day, 12-week, or even 12-month profits.”

As much as you might think violating a deadline to let a customer in would improve a relationship, it does not.  It does not foster a 12-decade relationship of trust and believability.

Giving your deadline integrity conveys that YOU have integrity.

And in the long run, good people want to have relationships with people who have integrity.

And because I want to attract good people as my clients and customers, I need to make sure my sales deadlines are held to that same standard.

I’ve continued to turn away money because of this…

The BTMSinsiders campaign was a great success.  Enough so that I’m going to do a training for members on Fast Cash Flow Email Campaigns, in January.  I’ll cover that campaign, plus others that have more than achieved their campaign objectives.  And what principles and strategies made them successful.

But it’s important to note that I could still be taking new memberships from this campaign.  Even this morning, I’ve been asked for an exception.  The answer has been and will continue to be no.

Not because I don’t care about you.  But because I do.  Because if I instill in you the expectation and belief that you don’t have to take advantage of great opportunities when they present themselves, I’d be doing you a disservice.

Some deadlines aren’t real.  Those that aren’t real aren’t nearly as effective.

Real deadlines — inviolable deadlines treated with sanctity — matter.  They matter because they can impact the entire trajectory of your life.

There are lots of ways to create real deadlines…

Of course, there are things like holiday sales, common in retail, and that work for one-time purchases.  You can run a deadline on any calendar date, and make it real by legitimately offering a temporary price.  Do this too often and it can cause customers to wait for sales to purchase.  But done infrequently, it can be very effective.

Another approach is the launch.  There’s a lot to this, not to be covered here, but some services only open for limited times and run launches for that reopening, and that can work very well.

Also, you can play with things like bonuses and ways to augment the offer that you legitimately take away after the deadline, that can drive response.  For example, you could run a campaign that includes a bonus of a live Q&A webinar that will come and go, and serve as a good motivator for response.

Get creative.  The trick is to find that legitimate urgency to add to your campaign.

Then stick to whatever deadline or urgency enhancer you defined in your marketing.

Because that will improve your relationship with both respondents and non-respondents.  And it will only increase the power of your next deadline or urgency element.

Done repeatedly through time, this is a compounding breakthrough.

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr