A 60 Second Game for Entrepreneurs

entrepreneur gameImagine you’re on a reality TV show called Last Chance. 

An Archie Bunker-like accountant comes in and says “If you don’t make TWICE as much money in the next 3 months as you’ve made in the last 3 months, I’m pulling the plug on your business–sorry Charlie, go get a job.”

But…to help you succeed, he’ll give you whatever information or help you need in ONE area of marketing…whatever you want, as long as it’s related to attracting more business

Oh yeah, as long as you tell him what that area is in the next 60 seconds.

What would you tell him?

 
Tell ME in your answers below!
 
(Remember, you only have 60 seconds, so don’t over think it!)
 
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What NOT to Add to an Email Subject Line

Landing page research firm Marketing Sherpa is known for their terrific stats on what works best in sales copy, email marketing and more. They offer a pretty pricey subscription to access everything on the website, but non-subscribers can get free access to articles for a limited time.

Since a recent survey of non-subscribers had shown 68% didn’t know how long the free access lasted, they decided to test if adding the article’s expiration date in the email subject line would improve response…

Seems like a no-brainer, right?

Because in general, adding some form of believable urgency to an offer boosts response–often quite a lot. (In this case, the subject line is offering great info inside.)

But not this time. After 10 weeks, they reviewed the data and found that adding the expiration date to the email subject line had the OPPOSITE effect…

Slightly decreasing open rates and clicks versus the same exact email subject line without the expiration date.

As I’ve said before, people aren’t always rational and what works doesn’t always make sense. It could be the recipients thought they had less time than they really had, so seeing the real date made them more likely to procrastinate. Who knows.

Of course, just because it didn’t work for Marketing Sherpa doesn’t mean adding a deadline to your subject lines wouldn’t work…

Bottom line–with email subject lines (or anything!), it’s good to start with rules of thumb, but always test, test, test because nothing works 100% of the time.

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Customer Psychology of Money Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to the Pop Quiz:

1. “If you put off this small $150 investment now, you could end up spending $1,500 to replace your entire air conditioning system in a few months…”

Opportunity Cost, since the cost of not acting now could be having to replace the system in the near future. Also, Relativity, since you’re showing the $150 is a bargain compared with the $1,500 option.

2. “For just 60 cents a day—the cost of a cup of coffee—you can sponsor a child…”

Relativity. This commercial ran for years on TV. Sure, they could have said it’s just $18 a month, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as successful as relating the sponsorship cost to something they buy every day like a simple cup of coffee. (Obviously, not from Starbucks)

3. “Your investment in this seminar may be tax-deductible, please consult your accountant…”

Pain of Paying, by reminding you that you may get some of the cost back at tax-time. And Mental Accounting, because it’s trying to get you to think of it as a tax-deduction instead of an expense.

4. “You could spend 40 hours wrestling with writing your own sales page, or you can hire me…”

Opportunity Cost is implied–by spending 40 hours writing your copy, you’re not spending those 40 hours meeting with clients or doing other important tasks you’re more suited to doing. You could also argue Fairness, by stressing the effort that’s involved in the task–which may be more than what the prospect realized.

5. “For today only, you can put it on the QVC EZ Pay plan for just 3 payments of $19.95…”

Pain of Paying. Payment plans are a great way to ease the pain of paying for customers. Opportunity Cost, since those who wait will miss out on the payment plan (which adds an authentic sense of urgency to the offer).

6. “You can also use PayPal for payment by clicking here…”

Pain of Paying and Mental Accounting. People often see the money in their PayPal account as “play money”–separate from their bank account where they pay their bills, which also eases the pain of paying.

7. “Choose from the following subscription options: the Internet only version for $29, the print version for $99, or the Internet and print version for $99”

Relativity. Here the relativity is among their buying choices–why would you get just the Internet version when you can get Internet and print versions for just a little more?

8.“I’ll get your lock open in just 15 minutes—without scratching up your door–or my visit is free”

Fairness. This combats the fairness obstacle for the pro locksmith by repositioning the potential negatives (having the procedure look too fast and easy) into positives.

How’d you do?

Understanding customer psychology like this (and this is just the tip of the iceberg!) is essential to making all of your marketing more effective and turning more browsers into buyers.

I can make sure you’re tapping the right buttons and tell you exactly what to do to get more sales, more clients and more opt-ins from your copy. Print or online, it doesn’t matter–check out and sign up for my new Sales Copy Investigation service today!

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5 Logic-Defying Ways Your Prospects Think About Money

Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely at the GKIC meeting for entrepreneursIn the last post, we talked about choice architecture–how you can shape the decision-making environment to influence a prospect’s buying decisions.* But Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely has found that we have some peculiar irrationalities when it comes to money too…

5 Logic-Defying Ways Your Prospects Think About Money

Opportunity cost. Even a first grader can tell you that $10 – $10 = $0. Once you spend that dollar, the opportunity to spend it on something else is gone.

But when researchers asked Toyota shoppers what buying a new car would mean they couldn’t buy, they were dumbfounded. The only answer they came up with was that they wouldn’t be able to buy a Honda. Um, if you were never planning to buy a Toyota AND a Honda, you aren’t really giving anything up, are you?!

The researchers were looking for how many vacations, dinners out, and so forth they’d have to give up to afford the car–things they actually planned to buy–or perhaps the free time they’d have to give up by working more.

Although we know money spent one place can’t be spent in another, it’s hard to make our minds actually go there and consider what we’re giving up.

Relativity. Cost is never absolute. While buying a $25k car, we’ll spend another $2,000 for the leather seat package without blinking an eye–yet claim the $2,000 leather upgrade for a $800 sofa is “too expensive”…even though we’ll spend far more time on the sofa.

On the other hand, we’ll be thrilled about the bargain price we found for our vacation…until the person next to us on the plane says they got the same vacation for less. The price we paid didn’t change, only our knowledge of whether there was a cheaper price out there.

Pain of paying. Many times, we’ll opt to use credit cards even when we have cash to pay for things like groceries and meals out (i.e. things there’s little chance you’ll return, we hope).

Why? Because we can just swipe our card and not think about how much we’re actually spending on that sweater or second guess if the uber-cool gadget is really worth that. It doesn’t really feel like we’re spending that money. But it’s totally different when you have to count out and hand over the cash.

Mental accounting. Once we allocate money to something in our mind, it’s stuck there and we don’t move it, even when it might make sense to. The most literal example of this is having a big savings account earning less than 2% interest while having three times that amount in credit card debt at 19%.

Logically, you’ll “earn” more by putting those savings toward paying down the debt. But we often don’t because the savings and debts are in separate mental buckets.

But we do this with spending too. Prospects say they don’t have the money to attend your seminar, yet book a vacation to Hawaii the next day. Obviously, they had the money. But in their mind, it was already allocated to the vacation. There was nothing left in the seminar bucket for you.

Fairness. We basically expect an item that costs more to be bigger, take longer or have higher fixed costs. And when it doesn’t, we feel gypped.

In other words, customers will happily pay the newbie locksmith $150 after he struggles to open the lock for hours, but balk at paying $150 to the old pro who opens it in a heartbeat…because it’s not “fair” to pay him so much for doing virtually nothing.

Nevermind that the pro’s skill and speed meant that they still made their meeting and landed a new customer that day or prevented their kids from being stranded in the rain for three hours and getting sick. (Again, because we have difficulty thinking in terms of opportunity costs!)

The bottom line is we tend to value visible effort more than the actual result.

Now here’s a quick test to give you some ideas about how to use these principles to improve your marketing and sales copy conversions…

Pop Quiz

Identify which of the money psychology principle(s) discussed above are being addressed in the copy snippets below, then click the link at the bottom of the post to see the answers…

  1. “If you put off this small $150 investment now, you could end up spending $1,500 to replace your entire air conditioning system in a few months…”
  2. “For just 60 cents a day—the cost of a cup of coffee—you can sponsor a child…”
  3. “Your investment in this seminar may be tax-deductible, please consult your accountant…”
  4. “You could spend 40 hours wrestling with writing your own sales page, or you can hire me…”
  5. “For today only, you can put it on the QVC EZ Pay plan for just 3 payments of $19.95…”
  6. “You can also use PayPal for payment by clicking here…”
  7. “Choose from the following subscription options: the Internet only version for $29, the print version for $99, or the Internet and print version for $99”
  8. “I’ll get your lock open in just 15 minutes—without scratching up your door–or my visit is free”

Quiz Answers


* Notice I said
influence and not manipulate. The point is to help people overcome the obstacles to making the choices they really do want to make–not “trick” them into doing something they don’t want.

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What Witness Discrepancies Can Teach You About Customer Psychology

One thing that always surprises clients when they actually start testing their landing pages, sales copy and even sales presentations is that what you think would work best, often doesn’t. So often we assume we know how customers will act, think and speak. But you know what they say about assuming…

That’s why it didn’t surprise me when Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely said in a recent presentation that customers (and all humans) are nowhere near as rational as you think they are.

After all, logically, everyone knows it’s best to buy low and sell high with stocks.  But what do most investors do? Hang on to a high-flying stock, hoping to make just a little more money, then hitting the panic button and selling when it suddenly drops.

Yet, Ariely said relying on instinct and intuition for decisions isn’t much better. Ever lost control of a car on a slippery roard? Or been caught up in the ocean’s undertow?

If so, you know that your instincts–to yank the steering wheel in the opposite direction or try to fight your way directly back to shore–can land you in big trouble. Instead, you’re supposed to turn into the skid or swim parallel to the shore to get out of the situation safely…which is completely counterintutive.

According to Ariely, intuition is actually a synthesis of a myriad of inputs from your senses and memories in your subconscious mind. The problem is we don’t notice as much of what’s going on around us as we think we do, so our mind just fills in the gaps. That’s why you if you have 100 witnesses to an accident, you’ll get 100 different stories about what happened–with everyone believing their story is 100% true.

Decision-Making is a Lot Like an Optical Illusion

We think we know what’s going on in our minds, but end up being consistently wrong and making the same mistakes over and over again.

The good news is Ariely’s research shows we’re consistently wrong in predictable ways. And knowing what knocks us off track can provide valuable insights for influencing our prospects’ decisions.

One potential derailer is choice architecture—the environment you’re making the decision in. That includes:

  • The choice to opt-in or opt-out… “Check here if you don’t want to donate organs” will result in more donations than “Check here if you want to donate organs” because many people will go the path of least resistance by leaving the checkbox blank.
  • Choice complexity—More choices leads to more procrastination–not more sales. Because the more options there are to choose from (e.g. 24 flavors of jam versus six), the less likely we are to decide.
  • Justification needed—People who were asked to list three reasons why they loved their spouse were much more likely afterward to predict that they’ll still be happily married in a few years than those who had to list 10 reasons. Why?  Ten reasons are harder to come up with. So as they struggled to fill the list, they questioned how happy their marriage truly was.
  • Leading questions—Financial clients who were asked how they’ll feel if their portfolio drops 10% over the next year then gave answers indicating they were much more risk averse on an assessment questionnaire than those who were asked how it would feel to retire to the Bahamas in 10 years first.

In the next post, I’ll discuss irrationality specifically around decisions involving money as well as how to tap into our predictable irrationality to get more results from your marketing and copywriting.

Understanding customer psychology like this is essential to maximizing your marketing dollars. And a big part of that is your sales copy. If you’d like to find out exactly how to get more sales, more clients and more opt-ins from your copy, check out my new Sales Copy Investigation service!

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How to Get Customers to Spend More Part 2

Last week we talked about two of the psychological buying triggers mentioned in a Ladies Home Journal article on spending less that could be used to get your customers to spend more. Here are the three more tips they gave, along with how you can leverage the relevant buying trigger in your business.

Get Rid of Temptation
Well, we didn’t really need a magazine to tell us that an endless stream of emails and direct mail from your favorite companies intensifies your urge to splurge.

Or did we?

Because if anything, most business owners don’t mail or email their customers enough. The fear of becoming a pest seems to have reached epic proportions in the marketing world.

But there’s a reason why the saying “Out of sight, out of mind” has been around so long.

It’s awfully hard to “tempt” anyone into buying anything if you’re not communicating with them. Then when they do need something, they’re going to contact the first company that comes to mind–again, that’s not likely to be you if they don’t hear from you.

And with everyone’s inboxes flowing these days, they probably aren’t seeing every message you send anyway.

Still, you should mix it up by using more than one method of communication–such as email and direct mail. Not only will it keep them from getting tired of your messages, email and direct mail are proven to be more effective when used together.

Don’t Be Enticed By Free Trials

I can think of at least one book on my shelf that came from one of those “try it for 30 days and if you don’t like it, just send it back and you won’t owe a thing” offers. Or don’t send it back and they’ll just bill you for the book.

Offers like these have been popular for years because of what’s called “status quo bias”–people tend to stick with their current situation even when they don’t want it or its not in their best interest. (Thus, why most diets and other attempts to change habits fail!)

In other words, a whole lot of people never get around to sending the book back. (Like me in this case!)

But status quo bias can be a good thing for you, if you can create a monthly ongoing product or service and then give away free trials to get them started.

Don’t get me wrong–I’m against selling people things they don’t want. However, there have been times when I didn’t have time to try, say, a membership site during the free trial. But then continued emails from the site prompted me to start using it and I was quite happy I did sign up.

Note…ALWAYS make sure it’s clear they are signing up for a monthly service that will continue if they don’t cancel.

Know your Limits
Apparently, there may be a limit to the amount of self-control we can exert during a day. Once you reach your daily quota, you’re more likely to overspend.

University of Minnesota researchers found people who had to perform tasks involving self-control before shopping were more likely to make impulse buys and to spend more than those who didn’t. It’s that old “Well, I worked out this morning and ate healthy all day so I can afford the hot fudge sundae” reasoning.

And the self-control you exert does NOT have to be money related. So getting the salad instead of the burger you really wanted at lunch could cause a spending binge later.

What does this mean for you? Next time you’re scheduled to speak to a group, brainstorm some creative ways to incorporate exercises involving self-restraint into your presentation. (Or make sure yummy desserts are offered!)

Another way to leverage this is to make down-sell offers to people leaving your sales pages. Because people who are interested but didn’t buy will feel they’ve earned the right to buy a less expensive alternative that also meets their needs.

And if you missed last weeks’ tips on putting psychological buying triggers to work for you–Keep Your Hands to Yourself and Pretend You’re the Lone Customer–check them out for more sales-boosting ideas.

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How to Get Customers to Spend More…Courtesy of Ladies Home Journal

I was waiting in the doctor’s office to get my broken foot checked recently when a cover line on Ladies Home Journal caught my eye–”Save More Money Without Even Trying.”

(By the way, cover lines–the one-liners on the front of a magazine–are great places to get headline ideas because magazines rely on them to sell store copies–which are usually more profitable than subscriptions.)

The article itself, “Why You Spend More Than You Think,” talks about psychological triggers that encourage people to buy in an effort to help readers cut their spending. But I’ve taken some of their tips and turned them around to show you how you can use these triggers to help you increase your sales…

Keep Your Hands to Yourself
The longer you hold a product, the more you’ll want to buy it. Even if it’s just for a few fleeting seconds, having the product in your hands makes you start feeling like it’s already yours.

That’s why car salesman are so eager for you to take a test drive…Let’s face it, for the vast majority of people, the way the car handles isn’t going to make or break the buying decision. mind.

But when you get behind the wheel, you start seeing yourself driving it to work, running over to the kids’ school or cruising along to the beach. It starts feeling like it’s yours, which makes it a lot harder to walk away and leave the car on the lot.

If you’re selling a service, this isn’t quite as easy to do. Yet two ways you can use this to your advantage are…

  • Giving prospects a sample of your service–again, it helps them see more concretely how it will help them and how they’ll benefit if they keep using it
  • Including details and powerful words in your copy to help them experience how they’ll look, feel and be after using your service

Pretend You’re the Lone Customer
Customers are more likely to choose a pricey brand over a cheaper one if other shoppers are nearby because they’re concerned what the other shoppers will think if they go for the cheaper one.

Yeah, this sounds a bit vain, and I know, you’re not like that. But remember these are common triggers–that does not mean they apply to everyone. The question is do they apply to your audience?

Regardless, this is a great strategy to consider when you’re selling at a live event. People will naturally talk to others when they’re waiting to turn in their order form or with other attendees afterward–and some do want the bragging rights of saying they’re getting the best, most exclusive option you offer.

So make them happy and be sure to offer several packages at different price points, including a VIP level option they’ll be excited to tell everyone about.

Since this is getting long, I’ll save the last three strategies for Part 2 of How to Get Customers to Spend More, which will be posted next Tuesday!

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A 3-Part Strategy for Motivating Clients to Give Referrals

Recently, I had a Marketing Strategy Session with a chiropractor client and one of the topics was getting more referrals from past and current patients–here are a few tips I shared that could be applied to all types of businesses.

First, it’s important to know most people really do like to give referrals because it makes them feel good to be able to help a friend or family member in need.  Some folks also get a kick out of looking “connected.”  So keep that in mind so you don’t feel like you’re asking for a favor.

That said, then why don’t they refer others more often?

1. Either they forget or just don’t know how to do it. For example, if they hear someone say they need a chiropractor, they may think of you. But it’s far more likely they’ll hear someone complaining about a problem you can help them solve.

Problem is–does your client know all the problems you can solve (or what you specialize in)? And can they explain what you do to someone who’s never hired someone like you before? Often, they don’t or they can’t.

2. Incentives that feel like disincentives. Businesses also don’t always think through the psychology of the incentive they’re proposing. Here are three types to avoid:

  • The slap-in-the-face incentive. Say your client just paid you $300 for a session. Then you send them a thank you note and $100 off coupon “to give to a friend.”   If it’s something they can share with a family member it might be OK, but can you see how they might be annoyed at passing along a discount they didn’t get to someone else?
  • The not-so-special special. Another problem is sending them a certificate for a discount or gift anyone can get by going to your website. People like to feel that they’re sharing something special. It’s not special if any one with a computer can get it.
  • The token incentive. If your sessions cost $300, sending the client a discount certificate for $10 off to give away doesn’t feel very meaningful.

So you want to come up with an incentive they’re motivated to pass along…and help them figure out who to give it to.

Here’s a three-part example that makes it super-easy for that same client above to refer others to you…

  • Send the client  (yes, by USPS postal snail mail if possible)  an exclusive certificate for $100 off a friend OR family members’ first visit. It’s special and meaningful.
  • AND tell them if their referral comes in within the next 30 days, the client gets a $100 gift card of some sort (gift cards can often be purchased for less than face value but you could also do a big discount off their own future visit. ) This rewards the client and encourages them to follow-up about using the certificate.
  • AND tell them “The next time you hear someone complain about x, y, or z, tell them our [what you do in plain English] can help” in the letter that accompanies the certificate. Now they’ll be alert to people mentioning these complaints and know how to describe what you do in simple terms.

Of course, after you send out the mailing, you could send a couple emails or postcards to remind them as well.

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5 Musts for Turning Sales Page Visitors into Clients



Good sales pages are the real moneymaker for your website. They’re part art, part science and part psychology because after all, most people are not eager to hand you their money. (And they usually won’t call for a free consultation either until they’re mentally prepared to hire and pay you.)

But there are a few basics that are essential to success.

  • First, sales page enemy #1 is distraction. If he gets distracted, he’s gone.* That’s why each product or service needs to have its own sales page, with no navigation tabs. The fewer the potential click aways, the better.

Think of it this way–you’ve got the prospect in the car and want to make it as easy as possible for him to get to the desired destination. So you program the GPS, top off the gas tank–anything to keep him from getting confused or taking a detour along the way.

  • Second, you need to persuade him to take that next step. By the time he hits the end, he has to want to hire you more than he wants any of the 2 bazillion other things he can spend his money on.

This is why sales page copy tends to be a lot longer than other pages. (But long does not mean you can ramble on and on.  It should be “tight”–so you’ve taken out any parts and words that are not necessary–and easy to pick up the gist if you scan it.)

To do all this, your sales page needs to do five essential things:

You MUST get his attention. He may be on your page, but he won’t be for long. Studies show you have less than 10 seconds to convince him there’s something here worth reading. That means two things…

  • Always have a benefit or outcome-driven headline that draws him into your copy.
  • Pay special attention to your opening. It’s often the hardest part to write, but the first 500 words will decide whether he keeps reading or not.

You MUST connect with the reader. Studies show that prospects who know, like and trust you are much more likely to buy…especially when you’re selling a service. So achieving that is key. That means…

  • Write as if he pulled up a stool next to you in a bar and complained about the very problem you can solve.  What would you say?  Your sales page should have the same “me-to-you”conversational style.
  • Use his language.  In person, we’re told to mirror the other person’s body language when we’re trying to connect with someone.  In writing, you need to mirror his language–how he would talk about what he needs and describe what you do, so he feels that you’re like him.

You MUST present a compelling solution. He doesn’t care about your process or other “features”of your service. And the most logical argument in the world will not be enough to win you the sale (unless he’s Spock from Star Trek). So…

  • Tell him every benefit he’ll get, every fear that will be assuaged, every desire that will be fulfilled, and the terrific results that can be achieved by hiring you (but skip the used-car-salesman”hype”).
  • Use words that evoke emotion throughout and aim for the emotional “sweetspot” of what he’s really hoping that hiring you will do for him.
  • Answer any likely questions and counter common objections so there’s nothing to encourage him to procrastinate.

You MUST demonstrate your credibility. Don’t make him wonder, “How do I know you can actually do all this?” And your word just doesn’t cut it. So you need things like…

  • Strong testimonials that cite specific benefits and results, with clients’ full names and photos (audio/video testimonials are even better).
  • A brief bio with relevant expertise or personal experience.DON’T send him to an About Us page–put what he needs on the sales page.

You MUST make an offer he’d be loony to refuse. That includes both a killer offer and a strong call to action. Make sure to…

  • Reveal everything he’ll get, including bonuses, and how each one benefits him.
  • Talk value instead of price. Your service isn’t another expense–it’s an investment in something important he’s looking to achieve.
  • Give him a believable reason to buy now, because once he’s left your page he’s probably gone for good.
  • Eliminate his risk of being disappointed by offering a guarantee.
  • Walk him through what he needs to do to so he sees just how simple and convenient it is to get started.

While there’s certainly a lot more to it, adding these basic elements will start converting a lot more of your sales page visitors into clients.

*I’m certainly NOT trying to imply that men are distraction-prone and women aren’t. I was just trying to keep the pronouns simple!

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Your Opinion Is Irrelevant

I always suggest you have people in your target market read your copy to make sure you haven’t used any jargon or other types of “foreign” language that would confuse your prospects. I stand by this advice but have recently realized I need to add a caveat–it’s good to get their opinion on the words you use, but tread carefully when it comes to any additional advice they may offer. Here’s why:

1. You (and probably your friends) are NOT your prospect. Sometimes there’s an obvious difference, if you’re targeting people of a different age, gender, industry or revenue-level. But there’s more subtle big difference as well–you DON’T NEED your services. Because, hopefully, you’ve been drinking your own Kool-Aid(R). And if you’re not hungry, you’re not going to look at the menu the same way as someone who is.

2. People are horrible at predicting their own behavior. If you’d asked me a year ago whether I would go to a $3,000 workshop that fall, I would have said you were nuts. About a month later, I signed up to do exactly that.

If you would have asked me whether I’d read a 15-page sales letter for the workshop–again, I would have said you were nuts. Who has time for that? But that letter turned out to be a big factor in my decision.

Truth be told, I never did read the entire letter. I looked at a few key items–like exactly what the workshop would cover, what was included, and a few testimonials. And those items gave such detailed information that I was almost ready to sign-up. (I didn’t actually do so until the last day to spread the payments out. But that’s a whole other post.)

Yet at the workshop, she asked for a show of hands of people who had read the entire letter. And some people had not only read every word–they even called the people who gave the testimonials.

3. Research and testing trumps your and your friends’ opinions any day. Marketers with deep pockets and research firms have done a lot of work to find out what’s most effective based on actual results achieved–not mere speculation. Save yourself the trouble and start with what they learned, tweaking as needed as you track your own results. It may seem counterintuitive to you–but so is pumping the brakes instead of stomping it down to the floor when your car’s skidding (prior to ABS brakes). Do you want to do what seems right or what’s most effective?

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