I like my business articles, marketing factsheets, sales perspectives, customer focuses, employee motivation guides. So I end up looking around a large number of websites, and today I’ve had to stop.

Today, I’ve been doing some research for a project – which requires me to look into money spinners as it were. Quick bucks, easy money and risk free investments.

I’ve been in a few forums and read Spam about, well – here’s the spiel:

“How would YOU like to be in a home-based business, where you do NO Prospecting … NO Advertising … NO Selling …NO answering questions … NO Speaking to prospects …and make absolutely NO telephone calls? How would you like to discover a great home business in which you can make great income just being totally passive? It is a legitimate company and it is a real business run by real people.”

How absurd is that, I’ve read this – or allusions to, and paraphrase of, rubbish all day.

They’re all topped off with the ubiquitous:

“To discover this amazing opportunity enter your name and email address to receive your free report, without obligation.”

It’s not just Spam posts, Spam comments and emails that have 50 links to services and products you have never heard of. Their banner ads on and sponsored links on sites that aim to provide you with information about how to run a business.

The last banner I saw before writing this post said – “Turnkey systems with no selling”. I didn’t bother investigating that one.

They might as well say, “Enter the sweepstake, now!”

Getting money without work is, despite it being née-on impossible, there’s little or no point to it. A budding entrepreneur needs a drive to get stuff done (good point made here) – not to free load. Yes, we all like it a little easier sometimes, and most of us like to think of – If I won the lotto’ scenarios. Surely, though, the whole point is to chase the challenge?

Look around you and see if you can find silly claims. Silly claims aren’t always false, but they are sometimes pointless. Saying things like, “Increase productivity by 500% without spending a penny more” may very well be a claim you can substantiate – but do your customers instinctually play along?

Claims like the one above seem over-done, exaggerated, dishonest and sometimes just plain patronising. If your statements have the potential to have your customers thinking, “Yea right, do you think I’m stupid?” are they still worth using?

Guide your customers in like this:

• Ask a question to get their interest – how do you increase productivity without spending more money?
• Explain the steps involved – you do A, plus B and then C at this point.
• Then put your claim in the conclusion – that works out to a 500% increase in productivity.

Some claims and suggestions need to be placed deeper in your strategy then others. These types of messages should be entered in your brochures, not your one-liner adverts.

Sure, things like – “You’ve won a place in a £1,000,000 sweepstake” will attract people. But this tactic is for getting 1 in a thousand people to spend more than the second it takes to bin your flyers considering your offer.

Unless you’re not even remotely interested in getting to your real customers, and not just every Tom, Dick and Harry: you need to go for your niche. Compare line fishing to a trawler’s net – one gets you loads of fish – the other lets you gently reel in the ones you need.

Not all ideas will make sense to all people, all the time. That’s to be expected, but if your idea doesn’t make sense to your audience then you have a problem.

There are a number of tactics you might want to engage with:

Use the understanding your customers already have, and transfer it to your product.
Provide high quality information to those that are curious enough or inspired enough to seek it.
Educate those that you’d like to buy into your idea.

Don’t loose sight of the likelihood that, if your customers don’t understand your product, you are probably either - selling unethically, or just not selling at all.

Customer understanding is paramount. Understanding your customer base will ultimately lead you to understanding at what level your customer needs information. Your niche geeks will want detailed specs - they need to know how fast it is, how big it is, what it’s made out of, all the dimensions et cetera. Your late joiners just need to know that it has a word processor installed.

The key thing is try, or in other words - care.