From:

North of Jewfish Creek

Tuesday, 9:00 p.m.

 

   I have been working on a marketing concept for nearly half-a-year. This is, I believe, a concept that wouldn't work nearly as well if John Kerry were elected President of the United States. Since George Bush has been re-elected President (and the results are now final) it is my belief this marketing concept will work in a spectacular way. And, this could be a bonanza no matter if you're marketing on-line... or off-line... or a combination of both!

   By the way, you should not take this information as to mean I was or was not rooting for George Bush to win. I don't believe my newsletter is a proper forum in which to express my political views.

   But, since Bush did win, I would like to use this concept I have developed to make as much immediate money as I can for myself, and a few other select people. Therefore, I am now doing something I haven't done for 14 years. That is... I am, as of right now, actively soliciting for a few new clients.

   I have done some client work over the past 14 years, just to make sure I wouldn't lose my touch. However, when all of these clients came to me, it was their idea, not mine.

   It would appear I have not lost my touch, to say the least. Three days ago, I got the results of a sales campaign I had written for a very famous person in the marketing and real estate business. You would know his name instantly but, for personal reasons, I think it's best I keep his identity confidential.

   In any case, the spreadsheet (Lord, I hate those things!) he sent me illustrated the copywriting I did for him pulled in 6-1/2 times MORE MONEY than anything written by any other copywriter he has ever hired. By the way, he's a multi-millionaire so he does have the money to hire the "creme de la creme" of copywriters in the entire world.

   I want to tell you about the last time I actively solicited for clients. I was living in Key West and informed the readers of my newsletter that, if they were willing to pay my fee ($15,000 upfront and 5% of the backend sales my efforts produced) I would pay all their expenses to fly to Key West and put them up in a hotel at my expense, while we discussed their project. I also told them if they did this, they didn't have to guarantee they would become a client of mine... but... they at least had to be a "for real" prospect to whom price would not be a concern.

   Many of those people did become clients. And a few did not. But there was one guy I especially remember. Why? Because, in my opinion, he was guilty of fraud. After I flew him to Key West, put him up in the best hotel, and discussed his project at length with him, he said, "Everything sounds great... but... I think $15,000 for your upfront fee is too much to pay you."

   I did everything I could to hold onto my temper but, what I really wanted to do was leap across the table we were sitting at, wrap my hands around his neck, lift him up off his chair and in the air, choking him until his entire body was shaking and his legs and feet were dancing around like he was doing the "Funky Chicken".

But, of course, I didn't do any of that.

   I simply ended the conversation immediately in a civil manner, took him back to his hotel and suggested he get an early flight back to wherever he lived. I think that man was genuinely bewildered by my sudden lack of zero interest in him and his project.

   See, it's no crime to not be able to afford the expertise of someone like myself. But, it is obnoxious to pretend you can afford someone like me... when... you flat-out already know you can't afford me... or... you are unwilling to pay the fees I charge.

   Look, I want you to understand something: I have untold
thousands of rabid readers of this newsletter. But, this message is truly only directed at a handful of them. Maybe only one or two. It is only directed to what I call "PWM" (which is an acronym for "Players With Money").

   Since it is my job to provide my readers with a learning
experience, I'm going to do that by demonstrating how to do
something I've never quite done before. Many copywriters have
written to me complaining they couldn't get any clients. I always tell them, there's no such thing as a world-class copywriter whoshould be hurting for clients. All he should have to do is write a sales pitch for his services. And, he should then be flooded with more clients than he can handle. By the way, I wrote a newspaper ad once for Jay Abraham that, when it was ran in a single newspaper, brought him in 602 potential clients.

   Anyway, if I were writing a pitch for my copywriting services (as I guess I am doing now) here are some of the points I would make:

* Gary Halbert may have hit more "financial home-runs" for his clients than anyone else in history! These clients include Ron LeGrand, Robert Allen, Ernest and Tova Borgnine, awardwinning actress Nancy Kwan, Vikki LaMotta and many others, too numerous to mention.

* Gary Halbert's biggest home-runs have been written for himself or companies in which he had some sort of ownership. Everybody knows about the famous "Coat-of-Arms" letter, which may be the most widely-mailed sales letter in the world with more than 600 million copies mailed. That family crest letter built an organization that needed 700 employees to keep it going... and... 40 of those employees were needed just to make the bank deposits!

* Gary wrote a sales letter for a diet product for Health Laboratories of America which was so good, it almost made skinny people buy the product! At one point, when the client had run out of diet-related mailing lists, on Gary's recommendation he got the compiled file of everybody in America who had a driver's license. Then, via computer, a simple calculation was done based on the height and weight information in that file. If it turned out a person weighed more than they should for their height, the client mailed Gary's sales letter to that individual. The client mailed millions of letters to that one file and made DOUBLE THE PROFIT.

* Gary has written for the biggest financial publishers in the world, including Phillips Publishing, KCI, Agoura Publishing and many others whose name you would not recognize! Once he wrote a "penny letter" for Phillips Publishing. (That's a letter that has a penny attached to the front page as a "grabber".) Phillips Publishing mailed so many of those sales letters, they actually had to have the Denver Mint produce many more pennies than they normally would have and had to have them shipped in box cars directly to the Phillips facility.

* When Tova Borgnine wanted to launch a new perfume, Gary not only created the winning formula for the perfume, he also wrote a newspaper ad that created the biggest perfume launch in history! His ad got more than 7,000 people to show up at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. The ad also produced unsolicited purchase orders from monster department stores like Federated (the biggest department store chain in the world), Filines of Boston, the May Company and a host of others. The event was also written up in "Time" magazine. The work Gary did for the Borgnines literally put their company on the map and jumped their gross from $20,000 per month... to... $800,000 per month!

* Gary wrote an 8-page direct mail promotion for Howard Ruff that doubled his subscription base!

* Another company hired Gary to help them raise money for their IPO and his full-page newspaper ad (which appeared twice in "Investor's Business Daily") brought in enough qualified investors to produce nearly two hundred million dollars!

* Gary worked on the Nancy Kwan skin care commercials and made the breakthrough that enabled them to run profitably on TV for nearly two years!

* Gary wrote a direct mail promotion for CASI (Computer
Amusement Systems Inc.) that jumped their gross from three million... to... 13 million a year!

* But, Gary also made millionaires out of many "mom and pop" small type businesses who had very little to start with!

* Gary helped guys like Jeff Paul, Joe Polish and many others go from eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to become multimillionaires!

* George Zangas (world-famous power lifter) mailed a postcard Gary wrote for him... which... generated $1,000 for every $100 he spent! And George continued to make these profits even though he mailed it to the same list five different times!

* One of the marketers Gary admires greatly and who is worldfamous is Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy got his start in marketing working for Halbert's Inc. in Bath, Ohio. At a seminar about a year ago, Dan was talking about a guy who said he couldn't make a profit with the ad he was using. Dan looked at the ad and thought it was spectacular. Dan then discovered it was Gary Halbert who had written the ad! Dan told the guy (and you can hear it on tape), "There's no way to improve this ad. It was written by Gary Halbert. If you can get Gary, and you can get him interested, and you can get him focused, there's no way in the world you're going to get a better piece of marketing copy from anyone else on earth." Dan then pointed out to this guy it was not the ad that was failing but, it was the way the guy was exploiting (actually lack of exploiting) the ad and his failure to set up a proper infra-structure and several other things he was not doing properly. NOTE: I have not quoted Dan word-for-word about what he said about that ad because I do not have that tape right now. But, I have related accurately the gist of his comment.

* Gary's worked on 17 successful infomercials, wrote the two most successful direct response newspaper ads, has produced scores of highly-successful magazine ads, created several catalogs, developed phone scripts, etc.!

* Many people say you should include testimonials in all of your sales pitches. Gary stopped collecting unsolicited testimonial letters more than a decade ago after he had already received over 7,000 of them! Now that he has the most widely-read marketing newsletter on the Internet, it would almost be impossible for him to buy enough ink cartridges to print out all the rave testimonials he gets on a daily basis.

   Okay, those are just a few of the points I would make about
myself if I were writing an ad to pitch for clients. But, probably the most important consideration you should be aware of is... most of the time... I am not willing to take on any clients. But, I am a little bit "in heat" to work with a few clients now because I have just made what I believe to be is a truly gigantic marketing breakthrough. Everybody in marketing will know about this breakthrough a year from now... but... it will be old news by then. I believe it will work for years to come. But, I think the first people to use it are going to make money beyond their wildest dreams.

   You know, I could write a more compelling sales letter to you for my copywriting services. But frankly I'm tired of writing about myself and this half-assed, sloppy pitch is making me feel "funny". But, I do feel moved to tell you another story.

   I was recently contacted by a guy who said he had read each and every issue of my newsletters on my website and he was thinking about hiring me. He wondered if I would send him a portfolio of ads I had written for other people so he could evaluate whether or not I had enough talent to work for him. I was NOT polite with this guy. I told him something to the effect, "Look, if you've really read all my newsletters, many of which include examples of what I've written for other people, and you are still in doubt as to whether you should hire me or not, you are NOT a serious person." Actually, what I said was much more profane than that. But, I see no need to reprint it here.

   This deal is not for everyone. There are certain people who
shouldn't even think about calling me in response to this offer. So please, if you fall into even one of the following categories... do NOT contact me to become a client of mine:

* I don't want to waste one single second with somebody who cannot afford my $15,000 upfront fee and/or thinks they are going to be able to hire me at a discount.

* Also, I don't want to talk with anyone who has to check with anyone else as to whether or not they should hire me. If you have to check with your lawyer, your accountant, your spouse, your mommy or your daddy or anyone else, just assume it wouldn't be a good idea and don't waste my time.

* My methods are unusual, to say the least. Don't expect me to slow down to a crawl just to make you comfortable. When it comes to money, I go right for the jugular and, if this takes you out of your comfort zone, you should look in the Yellow Pages of your phone book under "Advertising Agencies" and go ahead and waste your time talking to one of those brilliant Ph.D.'s who'll be happy to create a much more conventional (and totally unprofitable) campaign for you.

* And, I'm not looking for anyone who has to scrape up the money to hire me. It puts way too much pressure on me to know someone has bet their entire life's savings on me producing a winner for them. And that, if it's not a huge winner, they and their family will be reduced to eating bark off trees.

* Another thing, if you are hiring me to write a promotion for you, I will want to get a lot of information from you. But, you need to remember that once I have this information, I will write what I think is the best and ask you to check it for factual accuracy. But, I will NOT change the sales pitch I have created just because you and/or your spouse (or someone else) thinks the ad would work better if it were
written differently. There is an exception to this. If you, yourself, have written sales pitches (as I have) that have generated billions of dollars in profitable revenue, then I will be interested in what you have to say.

   One last thing, I am only one person and I can only do so much work. I've got a spectacular new marketing concept which I think will work like crazy... and... the best time of the year to market most products is the month of January. So, if you are at all interested in hiring me and becoming a client of mine ("for real"!) call me at (305) 534-7577. If I'm not available to take your call, simply leave your name and contact information (phone number and best times to reach you) and I'll return your call as soon as humanly possible..

 

  Sincerely,
 
   Gary C. Halbert

 

*P.S. In my opinion, what I've just written is a lousy "sales pitch". I could do much better if I gave it the time and effort it deserves. Basically, the pitch can be boiled down to "I'm Gary Halbert and I'm eager and willing to write for clients for about the next 30-days. So if you're interested, call me right away at 305/534-7577."

 

*P.P.S. I feel a little guilty about writing this long e-mail message to you. I think I should only write you brief e-mails informing you I've posted a new newsletter on my website. But, I can't help it. I am so excited about this marketing concept, I wanted to get this message to you on the same day Bush won the Presidency. I'll behave from now on. I promise.

 

 

Copyright © Gary C. Halbert.  All Rights Reserved.