Many years ago, Earl Nightingale authored the “Strangest Secret”, which has been called one of the greatest motivational books of all time. In this book, Nightingale suggested blocking one hour each day for study. He believed this one hour of concentrated daily study can lead to massive progress in our lives.
The reason why this one hour of daily study can lead to massive progress is because we can slowly become masters in what we choose to study. Want to learn how to play the guitar? Devote one hour a day to practicing challenging music. Over time, your practice will compound into incredible skills. You’ll get better with each passing week.
Well, we can apply Nightingale’s approach to almost any area of our lives. For those of us who manage our own businesses, my suggestion is to devote one hour a day to the study of marketing. More specifically, lead generation and lead conversion. This focused study will have the largest impact on your businesses because this improvement in your marketing skills will bring more clients to our businesses with each passing week.
Here’s how I suggest you use your one hour of daily marketing study:
1. Spend the first 30-minutes of your hour reading the best books on marketing. During this 30-minutes of reading, you should come across many new marketing ideas you can use for your business. Make a note of every idea you come across. A few book suggestions for your study might be:
Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches by Joe Karbo
The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy
80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall
Influence by Robert Cialdini
Get your hands on these physical books. Buy them used from Amazon if you have to. You want to make notes and highlights in the margins. You want to use these books for years to come.
2. Spend the last 30-minutes re-writing the best advertisements and sales letters in history. When you re-write these legendary advertisements and sales letters, you should do so by hand with a pen and a paper. Marketing legend Gary Halbert once suggested re-writing the best advertisements by hand and I’ve used this approach with my marketing. This “re-writing” process is magical because it helps you get into the flow of writing copy.
You’ll find many of these legendary marketing pieces inside the books referred to above. In fact, in the introduction to book “Testing Advertising Methods”, you’ll find a copy of the wildly successful, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano But When I Started to Play!” advertisement. You can also google this advertisement and you’ll find it in seconds.
When you re-write these advertisements and sales letters, I want you to write them for your business. Now I realize the majority of these advertisements have nothing to do with selling real estate. It doesn’t matter. Re-write the advertisement to generate leads for your business. This is where you’ll turn this one hour of study into income for your business.
Here is an example of possible headline re-writes for the piano advertisement:
“They Laughed When I Said I Would Sell Their Home in 7 Days for Full Price, But When The Sale Agreement Was Signed…”
“They Laughed When I Said I Would Find a Beautiful Four Bedroom Luxury Home for Under $250,000, But Then They Walked into Their New Dream Home…”
“They Laughed When I Said I Could Help Them Create $3,000 a Month in Positive Cashflow, But Then I Showed Them This This Fantastic Apartment Complex…”
Don’t stop at the headline. Continue re-writing every paragraph of the entire advertisement. You’ll be amazed how powerful these marketing pieces can be for your business. You can turn this re-written advertisment into new marketing campaign for your business. You can use it as an article in your newsletter. You can use it to generate leads for an existing offer you already have. The options are endless. The best part about this daily process is that you’ll be creating new marketing pieces on a daily basis. Imagine what this might do for your business?
Please understand that both steps in this one hour of study are critically important. Both steps are designed to transform your business. By reading the best books on marketing, you’ll learn how to be a better marketer. By re-writing the best advertisements, you’ll become a better copywriter.
4 replies to "How to Use Earl Nightingale’s Strangest Secret to Sell More Homes"
Thanks Rob.
Very helpful.
Ben
Rob,
Thank you for the refresher with Earl Nightingale. I met him at a Sales Seminar that he was giving in the Mid 70’s and sold New York Life Insurance with his Son in Fullerton, Ca in the mid 70’s.
Life has many twists and turns and sometimes we lose sight of our Goal.
Zig Ziegler is another great motivator–” See You At The Top” book. Check it out.
Thank You, Again,
Steve Hepler
s.******@sb*******.net
Hi Rob,
Glad to hear you’re back. Great post.
I’ve been working on copywriting for a side info business over the past year. I can see how this exercise would be extremely valuable..
Just curious, when you write a sales letter what’s your target response / sales rate?
Obviously higher is better, and it depends upon on many other factors but as a “general rule” what do you shoot for?
Thank you sir
Ben
Ben the goal is create profitable marketing campaigns. For real estate sales, the typical response percentages aren’t a great guide for success. The reason why is because were not selling the typical product and we don’t typically need a huge response to have a great marketing campaign. For example, you could have a campaign that flops based on response percentages, but can be extremely profitable if you convert one or two new clients who buy or sell a property with you. A disappointing response rate may still lead to $5,000 or $10,000 commission checks. Try and focus on commission dollars generated and this will help you make better marketing decisions.