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Just Show Me How To Do It

By on July 23, 2010 in Business, Coaching

I needed to know how to do a certain task for my business recently, and I realized I had a home study course on how to do it.

I dragged my course out and surveyed the material. Hours of video, poorly indexed. A word-for-word transcript, capturing all the stream of consciousness rambling of the presenter. A mass of material. Worthless to me.

Especially since the system claimed to allow you to manage this particular marketing method in “as little as 15 minutes a day”.

I wanted to say to this particular product’s purveyor, “Surely you could just take 15 minutes and show me. Maybe an hour, if you explained every step?”

He wanted to sell me 30 pounds of DVDs and manuals, bulking up the course, so I’d pay more for it.

All I wanted: show me how to do it.

I think there may be a lesson here.

About Ray Edwards

Ray Edwards is a Direct Response Copywriter, Speaker, Author, and Marketing Strategist. His clients include Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Armand Morin, Matt Bacak, Jeff Walker, Alex Mandossian, Frank Kern, and Mark Victor Hansen, Mark Joyner, Mike Filsaime, Joel Comm, and many more.
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Michael Hudson

Great insights Ray. The simple fact is that when we sell info products by weight, we are really selling piles of data that the buyer has to mine to get to the information. We'd all be well served to think more like educators or facilitators of learning, i.e., apply instructional design concepts to the material and focus on teaching the lesson, not just brain dumping ideas and experiences. It's not easy and it takes a lot more time, but it works. Examples include Video Professor and Rosetta Stone...both are info products and both deliver because they are focused on the learner, not the teacher.

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Ray Edwards

Exactly - and those a great examples, as is Lynda.com. Thanks Michael!

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Suzie Ruhl

Where do you find such an animal that doesn't waste your time with telling about all the fancy cars they have paid cash for, all the exotic vacations they can afford, the big mansion and vacation homes they own. Just get down to business. It's not about how much money and belongings you have, it to me is about how I can make the money.

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Ray Edwards

I predict you will see more and more such animals. I am working on something that will answer this need, and I'm sure others are too.

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joe

I'm not an affiliate but a big fan of www.bmyers.com

Bill Myers is the master of doing a fact filled video...NO how good I am, no here's my impressive background, just hit the ground running with info and education. Thanks for watch, I'm outta here.!

Sign up for his weekly tip, sometimes its text but his videos are the epitome of helpful info.

Ray, I certainly agree with you, I think a lot of people equate quantity with pricing...especially in this "click-click" world, that is not the case IMHO...thanks for the post.

Joe

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Ray Edwards

You're welcome, and I agree - Bill's stuff is great,

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Juho Tunkelo

You're touching on a real problem here. Too many info products are concerned with just getting the information documented, without much thought going into how it's going to be consumed. And yet, the products seem to get the most praise over time are the ones that are made for easy consumption.

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Ray Edwards

This is really a touchstone for me lately, Juho, and I appreciate your thoughts. I'm considering creating some lower-cost information and training products just to see what the response might be. And I do believe that some products deserve their higher price tag - but I'm buying the INFORMATION and the RESULT - not the volume, number of pages, or hours of video. If I can pay someone $2,000 and they can show me a system that doubles my results, I'd much rather they do it in a series of short videos than have them give me HOURS worth of filler content.

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Sunita S Pandit

We are trying to impress upon the teacher the importance of the KISS methodology. I believe this is why i keep coming back to you every time I need to refresh myself with anything complicated...
Sunita Pandit

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Blase

That nails it! I have had this thought many times.

I just bought a highly marketed traffic course. The
info is good, but it takes awhile to get to it.

I think I went through the first 3 videos before the
presenter got to the "do this" part.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!

Shut up and get to the point, please!

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