On March 2^nd, people across the country honored the late Dr. Seuss on what’s known as Dr. Seuss Day.

The best-selling children’s author of all time, Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as “Dr. Seuss,” not only had a huge influence on children’s reading habits, but also on the way reading is taught.

The impact of one of his most famous books, The Cat In The Hat was so revolutionary it created a new kind of publishing for children—Beginner Books.

In the The Cat In The Hat, Dr. Seuss only used 236 different words.  They were all simple enough that young children could read them—yet told a compelling story which gave kids an incentive to read.

Response was so enthusiastic that it led Dr. Seuss to found “Beginner Books”, a publishing company specializing in easy-to-read books for children. You are probably familiar with the Beginner Books symbol that adorns this breed of books with the Cat in the Hat that says, “I can read it all by myself.”

This concept has helped millions of children discover what great fun reading can be.

An influential and phenomenally successful teacher, Dr. Seuss communicates more than reading lessons; he imparts wisdom about writing, business, life and even sales. Here are a few of Dr. Seuss’ best lessons:

What Dr. Seuss teaches about Sales:

In his book Green Eggs and Ham, the character Sam-I-am offers his prospect fourteen different ways to eat his green eggs and ham…

Including in a box, with a mouse, on a train, in a car…

Sam-I-am teaches you:

• Don’t assume your prospect isn’t interested. When Sam-I-am begins asking his prospect if he likes green eggs and ham, his prospect replies, “I do not like them, Sam-I-am. I do not like green eggs and ham.”

By the end of the book, the prospect finally tries green eggs and ham and discovers that he does like them.  Your prospect may initially not be interested because he or she doesn’t have enough information or a false perception. Be sure to give your prospects enough information (as well as variety) to make an informed decision.

• Make different offers. Sam-I-am gives fourteen different offers before the prospect finally tries the green eggs and ham.  Make different offers in order to find the one that may appeal to your prospect.

• Offer additional purchase options. Because Sam-I-am gave so many options in trying to sell his main offer (green eggs and ham), at the end, his new “customer”  decided he not only wanted the green eggs and ham, but that he would want them in all the various options previously offered. For instance, he “would eat them in a boat.” As you make additional offers, consider highlighting additional products to help your consumer become familiar with all you offer.

• Use assumptive language. Use language that is not “if”, but “when” type words and talk to your prospect as if they were already a customer. For example Sam –I-Am says, “Would you in a car?”  In your case you might say something like “Would you like it in blue or red?”

What Dr. Seuss teaches us about writing:

Dr Seuss’ advice for beginning authors is, “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

Dr. Seuss took care in choosing his words, constructing each sentence to be tight. Green Eggs and Ham uses just 50 different words, yet it still is able to tell a very compelling and interesting story.

What you can learn is:

• Make it compelling. Dr. Seuss tackles topics and creates interest by approaching them differently than what everyone else. For example, in his story about the Lorax, he challenges kids to think about the environment.  But he didn’t go at it like everyone else  He wasn’t heavy-handed and used lovable imaginary characters to paint a picture of what could happen and encouraged hope by subtle suggesting that something could be done if you mend your ways and care. Think out of the box and approach your writing in a way that compels your reader to think differently.

• Speak to your reader. The reason Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat In The Hat was because he was challenged by the director of Houghton Mifflin’s educational division, William Spaulding, to “write a story that first-graders can’t put down” and asked that it be limited to 225 specific words from a list of 348 words that were selected from a first grader’s vocabulary list.  Because he wrote to six and seven year olds using words they knew how to read, he was wildly successful. Are you using words and language your reader knows and understands?

• Make it memorable and fun. You may or may not remember the series of books used to teach children to read from the 1930’s to the 1970’s, “Dick and Jane”. The sentences were simple, for example, “See spot run”, but boring. Look at your own blogs, emails, and websites. How can you spice things up and have more fun? For example, GKIC Member Matt Furey has fun with his writing by making up words (just as Dr. Seuss did).

What Dr. Seuss teaches us about business:

When asked what made him so successful, Dr. Seuss once said, “I don’t write for children. I write for people.”  He also told an interviewer, “Ninety percent of the children’s books patronize the child and say there’s a difference between you and me, so you listen to this story. I, for some reason or another, don’t do that. I treat the child as an equal.”

One of many lessons you can learn, here are a few more…

• Be persistent. Dr. Seuss once said that he had a hard time finding someone who would pay any attention to his first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. In fact, this book was rejected between 27 times before he found someone to publish it. Imagine if he would have given up?

• Network and let people know what you’re up to. On Tuesday Dan talked about the power of “acquaintanceship”. Dr. Seuss’ first book was finally published when he spoke with a former classmate, Mike McClintock, who was an editor at Vanguard Press. McClintock signed Dr. Seuss to a contract.

• · Never stop learning. Who can forget the Dr. Seuss quote, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” The one thing you will find in common with ALL successful business persons is that they read. Be sure to set aside time to read your GKIC member material each month and you’ll go far in your business.

Incorporate even a few of these Dr. Seuss lessons into your business and you’ll not only impact your business in a positive way but you’ll find you and your customers having more fun too.

Dedicated to Multiplying Your Income,

Dave Dee

Chief Marketing Officer
Glazer Kennedy Insider’s Circle™
The PLACE For Prosperity WithOUT the Bull

P.S. If you’re interested in more “best of” wisdom, check out The Best of Dan Kennedy which assembles the best library of closely-guarded secrets Dan’s ever recorded for his clients. And when you enter promotional code 322 and order by this Sunday, you’ll get it at half off!

Learn more here: http://www.gkicresourcecenter.com/product/the-best-of-the-best-of-dan-kennedy/

For years I had a cartoon up in my office showing a bunch of guys struggling mightily to carry on their shoulders this huge wooden boat – full of wheels.

The entire time I was at the racetrack as a kid, everybody shoveled the manure from the stalls into big plastic tubs with handles, hoisted and carried them the length of the barn to the big manure wagons outside, then had to lift them up over the sides of the wagon to dump them – about 50 pounds to near shoulder height. Finally, today, they put ramps on the wagons and we use wheelbarrows. Well, why do practical solutions prove so elusive to so many?

No matter how smart you are, when whatever you do becomes routine, and you develop both ingrained belief systems and habits of thought and behavior about it, when you become emotionally invested in “your way”, when you do the same things in the same order the same way day after day, you develop SCOTOMA: essentially, inability to see anything but what you expect to see.

It’s why it’s so hard to proofread and spot typographical errors in your own work that you’ve labored over for hours or days; your eyes now see what’s supposed to be there; they actually see wrong as right!

It’s simplistic to say that working insulated in a business makes you stupid. I don’t think your I.Q. actually goes down. But your ability to apply it to the too-familiar situation does.

Are there cures? No. No cures. But effective treatments, yes. Like: not doing the same job or business or sport for more than a decade. Enough’s enough. Move on. Like: getting out of the business and day-to-day routine at least once a month, to go somewhere enlightening or inspiring or mentally challenging – like coaching/mastermind meetings. To bring in “fresh eyes” however you can, often. To read, a lot. To ask yourself a lot of questions. To catch yourself clinging to something just because it’s your way. To have somebody who can call you on your b.s., challenge your thinking, play devil’s advocate – with some credibility.

There’s a soothing balm too, and it doesn’t come in a jar either. It is simply remembering that we are ALL frequently Stooges

From Larry The Cable Guy:

“I was more frustrated than a starving Ethiopian with no legs watching a doughnut roll down a hill.”

Yeah, it’s tasteless. But it is funny. And, more importantly, it creates a vivid mental picture. I don’t talk about this much, but I think a ‘secret’ to persuasion in print, especially in print where there are no voice inflections or gestures or body language – but in other venues as well – is the crafting and delivery of vivid mental pictures.

We just went back to print another 25,000 ‘Why Do I Always Have To Sit Next To the Farting Cat?’ books to fill orders – and we’ve sold over 200,000 of the things, in part, because they work for the marketers using them, but also in part because the title conjures up a vivid mental picture.

Fiction writers are better at this than most of us are, which is why I’ve always studied good, popular, successful fiction writers to improve my skill as a sales writer.

Comedy writers are good at this too. I’ve been a joke writer almost all my life – in fact, I wrote comedy for a disc jockey and his nationally syndicated comedy newsletter when I was 17, 18 and 19. I can take a bad or ordinary joke and enhance it a lot by building better mental pictures in it. If it’s one I intend using in a speech, I work on it in writing, get it right, then tell it that way to anybody a dozen times and then I’ve got it. I’ve been a serious student of this for 30 years, studying Benchley, Thurber, Parr, Berman, Newhart, Charlie Jarvis, Steve Allen, and on and on.

Anyway, language that creates vivid pictures is very powerful. It has lost its power of late, but for years President Bush has gotten much mileage by merely mentioning “9/11” because we instantly see the smoke pouring from the collapsing towers, the panicked people running in the streets, and the weary firefighters, faces caked with smoke and char, digging. A lot of mileage, too, out of “we fight the terrorists over there or we’ll fight them here, in our streets.” People see that when it’s said. And that’s the question: do people see something when you say what you say or write what you write?

Most people don’t invest much conscious thought into the words they use. They wing it. I never have. I’ve carefully developed and stored countless stories, anecdotes, parables and jokes, to be pulled out and used again and again. Every sales pro should have this, at least for his main sales presentations, products or services. Amateurs wing it. Pros do not.

The other day, a client visiting said, “ I don’t think much of anything you do is accidental.” He is correct.

Something VERY different for a GKIC blog…and even more so, cause the Internet guy is posting it (it has NOTHING to do with SEO or the Internet at all).

This is an absolutely AWESOME video that somone I was just hangin’ with in Australia over the last several days shared with me.

Its a very moving story, but also has a few great marketing lessons in it:

• The difference a good headline can make.
• The power of emotional copywriting.
• The importance of having your marketing stand out from the crowd

In my Top 10 YouTube videos now!

Enjoy and share…

Here are two country-western song titles I heard in a backstage conversation at a SUCCESS event with Johnny Cash, Colin Powell, a couple staffers and me. I don’t know if they’re real or not. The first a true Hallmark sentiment, the second an ode to the conflicted emotions of a commitment phobic.

If My Nose Was Full Of Nickels,
I’d Blow It All On You

I Don’t Know Whether To Marry You
Or Go Bowling

As a very brief practical note, you gotta admit, they’d get attention as headlines.
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I recently noticed a commonality in the backgrounds of most of the most successful doctors. This commonality is quite interesting and instructive.

That commonality in their background started me thinking.

I went looking for that same commonality in two other important fields – the best direct mail and advertising copywriters I know or know of and the most successful entrepreneurs I know or know of.

I found the same commonality present.

Guess what it is? (more…)

We have been talking about copy in direct mail and the job of the copy which is to SELL! In the previous Success Marketing Strategy I mentioned that there is a little trick used to improve readability of copy and to keep the reader moving through the copy as well as to sell the person who skims and does not read the copy no matter how short it is.

That trick is called a double readership path. It is based on the idea that there are two extremes of consumer behavior, the impulsive buyer and the analytical buyer.

The impulsive buyer is in a hurry. Makes quick decisions and rarely reads anything. He skims. In most cases he’ll read only headlines, subheads and photo captions.

The analytical buyer, however, is slow to make decisions, requires a lot of information to do so and will read lots of material.

Two different people requiring two different readership paths. Here they are…
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We have been talking about one of my favorite subjects, which is direct mail and specifically the three BIG factors to consider in the all important opening.

Now let me reveal the fourth extra factor to consider which is some type of seasonal tie-in…if appropriate.

People are very, very conscious of holidays and tend to be very responsive to offers logically linked to a given holiday.

Again to use our example of selling a home cleaning maid service, I can immediately think of two seasonal tie-in opportunities, spring and Christmas.

For example:

We’ll give your house a thorough spring cleaning for half price and show you how you can permanently resign your position as housewife at a shockingly low cost.

Or… (more…)