My friend had not had a bath in over three days, there where pizza boxes littered across his apartment, and a funky odor filled the room.

As I walked into his apartment, I quickly became disorientated and started to feel myself losing consciousness. I felt my eyes starting to roll back into my head, and staggered to the window to get a breath of fresh air.

"John," I mumbled to my usually hygienic friend, "what happened to you?"

He then gave me a wry smile and his eyes became as large as Bill Gate's bank account.

My friend led me over to the TV where he had on “The Home Shopping Network.”

John needed to take some time off work to relax, but within three short days, had become a 'Home Shopping' junkie.

My normal, levelheaded friend had become hypnotized by one of marketing's most powerful techniques: Time sensitive offers.

If he didn't order "Peppi the singing fish" within the next 15 minutes, the offer would be gone forever.

The Yoda phone that exclaimed, "May the force be with you" when it rang would disappear into a galaxy far far away if he didn't act now. They only had 100 left in stock.

As I sat there watching my zombified friend order useless items he would never use, I decided I would apply this same technique to my own business.

I care deeply about all of my customers, so I wanted to make sure of two things:

- My offers would only be for useful products and services.

- The offers had to truly be time sensitive.

The results where astounding.

The first time sensitive offer I brought to my customers almost tripled my sales. I was immediately hooked.

Now I never make an offer unless it is time sensitive.

For my offers I use a customized script that keeps track of my orders or counts down the time left until the offer expires. When my product is sold out, or the offer has expired, the script then removes the order page.

I rarely make exceptions and extend the offer, unless someone had a problem ordering the product.

So how can you implement this strategy into your business?

To have a successful offer you should generally follow these two simple rules:

- Make the offer truly special (give a discount, extra bonuses, etc.)

- Make sure the offer is pulled when you say it will be.

I have tested 72, 48 and even 24-hour offers with impressive results.

These kinds of offers usually pull much better than if I limit the offer to 20-30 packages.

However, each list is different. So don't be afraid to test various offers until you find the right formula for maximum sales.

The kiss of death, and quickest way to lose credibility with your customers, is to make an offer that insults their intelligence.

Don't make a 48-hour offer, then run it for a week, just to make extra sales.

Your customers will quickly catch on to this, and you will see your response rates fall drastically.

Treat your customers with respect, and they will return the favor by making your bank account balloon to new levels.

Copyright © 2005 Jason Tarasi

About the Author

Jason Tarasi publishes the reciprocal links newsletter "Elite Links"
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