The magic of the Most Dangerous Question
A couple of years ago at my Autoresponder Seminar, Glenn Livingston was speaking. He said, “One of the best brainstorm questions you can ever ask is: What is the WORST email subject line I could possibly send to my customer?”
Then he asked the audience to toss out suggestions of the worst possible email they could imagine ever sending to their customers. People started shouting:
“Nothing I told you to do last year actually works.”
“All my testimonials are fake.”
“The only thing I want is your money.”
Then Roundtable member John Fox blurted out a real zinger. He says:
“I really enjoyed having drinks with your wife last night.”
Everybody busted out laughing. I jumped up, grabbed the microphone and ran with it:
SUBJECT LINE: I really enjoyed having drinks with your wife last night
Dear FIRSTNAME,
That’s right. She and I met in a bar at 10pm. We drank martinis ’til the misty dawn. And my friend, your wife is a very unhappy woman. As a person who cares about you, I’m warning you, if you don’t turn things around right away you may very well have a divorce on your hands.
She told me: “All my husband ever does is go to these get-rich-in-real-estate seminars and I’m SICK of it. I’m sick of the tenants calling at 2am with clogged toilets. I’m sick of the endless promises that ‘THIS’ is finally the thing that’s gonna make us rich, honey. I’m sick of the high taxes and lawn crews that don’t show up and the tenants that complain.
“I’m tired of that stupid apartment building that loses $1100 per month. I’m tired of dumping our entire 401K into interest payments and I’m tired of my husband not following through on all this supposedly great advice he pays for.”
Buddy, she is NOT a happy camper.
So… here’s where I can help.
I’ve designed a brand new program called “Help, my wife is about to divorce me!” and in this program we re-program your brain to stop sabotaging your success. Because, you see, the real reason that apartment is losing $1100 per month and the reason you keep paying too much for all these properties you buy is because there’s a rogue program in your mind that’s secretly driving you towards failure.
It’s time to fix that program, FIRSTNAME. Right now.
~~~~~
See how easy that was?
It pays to ask dangerous questions.
Robert Serling devised a series of 8 revolutionary business questions. I just hinted at one of them in the story I just told you. He’s got seven others. I love these questions and they’ll empower you to make simple changes with dramatic results. You can get all 8 here:
http://profitalchemy.com/the8questions/
Perry
About the Author
Entrepreneur Magazine says: "Perry Marshall is the #1 author and world's most-quoted consultant on Google Advertising. He has helped over 100,000 advertisers save literally billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax."
He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.
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Thanks for poignant exposure that real life is some
times like a cruel joke and that we may need help,
but a situation isn’t, necessarily, hopeless.
Geez Perry. Take it easy. That hurts! Talk about knowing your audience…
Just downloaded the ebook and will comment again if something in it strikes me. I have a feeling something will.
Based on that subject line, I never would have come up with that thought process.
You are clearly heads and tails above the rest.