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The Tip Formula

ALL CONTENT © COPYRIGHT 2011 AND BEYOND | JON BENSON 3X
FORMULAS, INC. | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | NO DUPLICATION ALLOWED

Jon: Again, here are the 5 steps of the VSL process, in order. You have the
snap suggestion, the vital connection, the big problem, the bigger
solution, the grand offer. Those are the 5 steps. Just a refresher
course.

And each of these steps will be covered in detail over the coming
sessions.

Now, the 1-2-3 formula, in the last session, we did the first 2 parts; but
we’re going to go over this again: 1) USP, 2) stories, 3) tips, which
we’ll do in this session, and 4) comparisons, which we’ll also do in this
session.

And like I said, today we’re going to be covering the 3 tips and the 4
comparisons, and we’ll do that in 2 different videos. So let’s go on.

The 3 tips. Why are tips important? That may sound like a trite
question, but it’s really not. You’re going to find out the real secret
behind what makes a winning video sales letter. And the heart of that
is inside tips. And we’re going to tell you exactly why.

It’s a taste of your own advice. Your listener is hungry for knowledge,
they want to hear what you have to say about specific things relating to
your benefits. This all goes back to your USP. How does this USP
and how do the 3 benefits of your USP help your reader, your
prospect, meet their needs?

And tips are a vital, important part of that. So, if what you say seems
like it would work, to your prospect, the prospect is going to tend to
believe you when you start going over the value of your offer and all
the exclusivity in your offer.


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In other words, they’re going to be more apt to purchase your product if
they feel like they’ve been given really good advice. And this
establishes that you actually are an authority, and not just someone
who is a great marketer.

You want to be an authority on the subject; but, again, we covered, in

the last session, how to present that in a way that is not egotistical, that
is not over the top. It’s very subtle, walks them into a state of rapport
as you’re building that position of authority.

Now, good tips create multiple ah-ha moments. And this is what you’re
really, really wanting to get out of your viewer, and that is the ah-ha
moment, the time in their life where they’re watching your video and
they go, “Wow! I did not know that.” or, “Oh, I can apply that right
now.” Those are the kind of tips that you want to focus on.

Now, everybody’s tips are going to be different. It depends on your

industry, obviously. I’m going to be using some samples, during this
session, on weight loss tips and dating tips and things that we’ve
worked a lot in, but we’ll teach you how to apply these tips to your
industry, using the tip formula.

But the heart of the tip is the Ah-ha moment, the “Oh, that really makes
a lot of sense to me.” And these moments empower your viewer. And
once they know these tips, they cannot undo them. They cannot un-
know the tip. And I find that to be really powerful. Once you’ve given
someone some knowledge, in other words, you can’t un-know what
you already know.

And that plays into your benefit, because at this point they feel as if
they have to use it in some way in order to improve themselves, in
order to get their primary desires, what they’re watching your video
sales letter for. They’re going to want to start using these tips.

And getting that desire to want to start applying something is building

your case to want to start applying the product, the actual end product
to their lives as well. So, if the tips sound like they make sense, the
product is positioned even stronger.

Now, this also creates a desire to reciprocate. And when you deliver
benefits for free, your prospect is going to have a tendency to want to
give back. That’s just the way humans are. And that’s what’s great
about giving these tips away.

And that’s one reason I don’t want you to ever feel like you have to
hold back on giving away too much information. We’ll cover this in a
little bit. But don’t ever fear that. Even if you gave away 90% of your
content, your prospect would still buy, seriously. You want to over-


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deliver.

And I’ve got a covert reason why this is true. All of your tips are going
to be leading your prospect to your unified solution. And that is found
within your product or service.

So, as you’ll see in the tip formula, they build and build and build, until
there’s almost no choice but to get your product.

Because it’s like, “Okay, if you want all the solutions to all these
problems,” and you’re going to build them down a funnel, “Then it’s all
found in this unified solution, called blank.” and that is your product.
You’ll see how the flow works and the funnel works here, in just a
moment.

Here’s the #1 reason why tips are so important: your affiliates. Even if
you’re not using affiliates right now, when you get a winning sales
letter, you will be. Affiliates will come chasing after you. And here’s
the deal: affiliates want to send to solid content.

They want to send to something that they can present to their list as
value, not as something that’s pitchy.

Now, they want something that converts, yes, absolutely. Most top
affiliates are very, very heavy on the whole conversion thing, because
that’s how they make their money. But they still want a position as
solid content. The reason why is they have fewer unsubscribes, they
have fewer complaints, and they provide a value to their readers.

The tips part of your VSL is the secret to this. If your video is too much
of a pitch without great content, affiliates are simply going to promote
someone else’s product. It’s that simple.

So, here’s the big mistakes in designing tips. Number one is going into
too much detail. Going into too much detail with your tips is going to
make your audience feel overwhelmed. And when your pitch arrives,
they may assume that your product or service is also overwhelming,
that’s it’s too complicated, “Oh, my gosh, I don’t think I can do this
because I couldn’t even handle the first tip. If I can’t handle the first tip,
then how on earth am I going to handle the whole book or the whole
service?”

So, you want to watch the detail.

Now, also, they’re not going to want to buy because they already have
so much to apply. So, if you give them so much detail that they can
start applying every single thing that you give them (in other words, the
tips are really, really long, and way overly-detailed), then they’re


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probably going to start applying it, rather than buying the product. So,
you want to leave it a little bit open-ended. We’ll show you how in just
a minute.

Number 2 is complex or difficult tips. And yes, your suggestions may

actually have to be somewhat challenging. In other words, that may be
your product. Your product may be simply somewhat difficult. But you
want to word your tips around the parts of your product that are the
easiest. The easiest parts of the solution.

If you do not do this, you’re going to lose the prospect to an easier

solution, or one that appears easier. This is the marketing side of tips.
You have to make this sound like it’s very easy to do, without lying.
You never want to do that. But you can look as some of the specifics
of what your product offers and your service offers, and find the things
within those specifics that are the easiest solutions that you can offer.

In other words, make your tips easy to do, if at all possible.

Three is what we call the obvious tease. And this perception occurs
when you fail to properly open a loop. I don’t know if you know NLP,
but if you do you know what that term means. If you don’t, I’m going to
explain it later in the session, and I’m going to give you some
examples of how to open a loop.

Now, teasing is great if you open a loop in the right way. But if you just
tease, tease, tease, and you never deliver on the answer, you’re just
going to have an angry prospect. Your prospect’s going to feel
cheated, they’re going to stop trusting you right off the bat. And most
important of all, they’re going to fall out of the state of rapport that
we’ve already built using the nightmare story and using the handshake,
and all the things that we’ve talked about before.

Now, open loops, when done correctly, is going to accomplish exactly

what you want to do, and that is encourage your reader to continue
watching, to find out the answer to blank, to find out the solution to
blank, to find out the 3 tips on blank. That’s okay. It’s opening a loop,
and we’re going to teach you how to do that.

What if you mess up these tips? What’s the worst thing that can
happen? Well, everything else in your whole video sales letter can fail.
It’s that serious.

I have analyzed hundreds of video sales letters and done quite a few
of them myself, obviously. And let me tell you, the tips can make or
break it, it’s that simple.

The one thing about tips that is the most empowering, I think, is


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dealing with conversions. So, your conversion will drop to next to
nothing if you don’t have good tips in your video sales letter. One of
the reasons that is, is viral. A good video sales letter with good solid
tips will spread around.

People will send it to somebody, even with a pitch in it. They’ll go,
“Man, I learned a ton through this video. Can’t believe how much
content this guy gave away in this video. It’s awesome. You guys
have to check this out.”

This is what we want your readers to be able to say about your

prospects. We want you to have a VSL that you can literally turn loose
and go viral with.

Now, the other thing is your affiliates may just simply refuse to promote
you. Remember, they demand content. And your viewer may think
that you’re disingenuous. That’s the last thing you want.

And your message is not going to get out to the world. That world part
is both the viral part and the people just windowing out of your VSL
right off the bat.

You want to get your message out to the world, because I know that
everyone watching this tutorial believes that they have a product that’s
worth selling. At least I hope you do. And, if your product is worth
selling, it’s worth getting out to the world.

So, tips are important. So let’s get to the right way to build your tips.

First of all, you want to be vague, but useful. How do you do that?
Well, you avoid too many details, as we just covered. You make it a
helpful tip, but it’s incomplete. We’re going to give you examples here.
And don’t worry about giving your best secrets away.

That’s what I said earlier. You want to assume that a person who
gives great tips always has more than what they’re not telling you. And
that’s human nature. We assume that. If I’m giving you tons of value
in a free video, you’re going to assume that I have tons more to give
you. That’s just a natural assumption. You’re not going to assume
that I just gave you 95% of my content, right? Right.

So, even if you do, and I’m not suggesting you do because that would
be a very long video sales letter, but you get the idea, if you give away
a ton of your content, even the best stuff, the buyer will assume that
there’s always more, something they haven’t read, something you
haven’t told us, and they trust you, so they’re going to want it.

Now, I liken this back to the fact that what I do a lot is I will buy books


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by the same person over and over and over again. And I will know that
this person is not, by any stretch of the imagination, saying too much of
anything new. And it doesn’t even really matter, because I think that
this person is giving fantastic content.

Like there’s fitness guy named Clarence Bass; I bought every book the
guys ever written, and 90% of the book is the same as the other books,
but it’s the 10% that he covers that’s new, that I didn’t know about, that
makes me go, “Yeah, man, that makes it totally worth this whole thing.”

So, this is the kind of attitude that you want to breed within your
prospect. Is that you’re going to give them so much more information
than they can ever realize. That’s very, very important.

So, that is the concept behind getting the whole “vague, but useful,”
but still don’t worry about giving your best secrets away.

Now, there’s some example phrases I would like to cover to make your
tips less detailed than they have to be.

“If you do this at the right time, you will blank,” whatever the benefit is.
The vague part of that is “at the right time.” What’s the right time?
Well, you didn’t say. You just said, “If you do this at the right time.”
This creates curiosity, your viewer is going to be inspired to watch the
rest of the video, in case you do tell them what the right time is.

And, of course, when you position your product correctly, that says,
“Okay, my product will cover the exact time that you need to do fill-in-
the-blank,” then they get the answer to their problem, the answer to
their question, within the product.

And again, your tips build toward the funnel, toward your product.
They build a funnel toward your product. That’s the whole idea.

If you know exactly what to say, for example in a dating product or

something like, or a public speaking product, if you know exactly the
right words to say, in the right order, this will work great for you. This is
a great way to enter into a tip. You can either tell them one or 2 things
that is the exact right thing to say, and then leave that tip open. Like
saying, “Okay, there’s obviously a lot more that you need to say, and
I’ll get to that in just a moment.”

And when you say, “I’ll get to that in just a moment,” what you’re doing
is seeding. You’re opening a loop and you’re seeding them for when
you do get to the moment where you reveal where all these other
things that you need to say are, and it just so happens to be within
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That’s how they get the information. “I’ll tell you how to get that
information in just a moment. It’s in my product.” You see what I’m
saying?

Here’s a great one for investing. “If you invest the perfect or the ideal
amount of money, this will happen.” Okay, what you’re telling them is
that they need to invest, but there is no amount there. It’s vague.
Perfect, ideal, what does that mean?

These are the kind of ways to build your tip. It makes it very powerful,
but it creates that much more curiosity.

Now, here’s one right out of my own VSL. “If you eat your favorite
foods at the right time, and on specific days,” and this goes on to say,
“you can burn more fat than you’re burning right now, on a strict diet.”

And I just leave this open. I just tease the tip a little bit. “If you eat
your favorite foods, you just have to eat them at the right time, and on
specific days.”

So, I give them the information, that they can eat their favorite foods
and lose weight. I even go into some detail later on, on how they do
that, like how they stagger their days, etc. And we’ll actually cover this
within this session, because I want to give you specific examples.

But I still keep the vague element in there, “At the right time, and on
specific days.” That’s what my book covers.

What are those right times? What are those specific days? That
makes them want to buy the product.

Now, here are the 3 types of tips. And I’m going to give them to you in
order of appearance. These are how they’re going to appear inside
your video sales letter.

The avoid tip, the enjoy tip, and the how-to tip. Your prime benefit is
the how-to tip. And this is your linchpin. All other tips will actually fail.
This is how you’re going to position the how-to tip. They’re going to fail
for the user. “They’re worthless, unless you do this.”

So, the how-to is the really big one. But the avoid this tip, things that
they need to avoid in order to achieve the success that they want in fill-
in-the-blank, or the enjoy tip, “Here’s how you can have fun with fill-in-
the-blank, here’s how you can make fill-in-the-blank more exciting.
Here’s 5 suggestions to make blank easier to do.”

Whatever creates enjoyment, we’ll go into extreme specifics on these,

so don’t worry about that. We’re just covering high-level, right now.


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But then, you get to the how-to tip. And the how-to tip is, “Okay, now I
need to tell you what I’ve teased you about before,” which we’re going
to cover, “and that is blank.” That is your primary benefit tease. And
that is the open loop that you’ve created.

Don’t worry, we’re going over this soon. And at this point, you want to
say, “If you don’t do this, everything else is worthless. Everything else
will fail.” So, all their attention is snapped back into your tip, how to do
something.

And we’ll tell you why this position, in this order, is so important.

There are 4 buyer modalities that you need to be aware of. Why, what,
how-to, and what-if. That may sound a little obscure, so I’m going to
clean it up and clarify it for you. But these are the modalities that
people enter into or have when they enter into your website and watch
your VSL, or watch any offer that you may have.

There are different personality types and there are different states that
each of us are in at different times. Some of us are into the why state
and the what state at the same time, some of us are just thinking, “How
do I do something.” That’s a how-to state.

Here’s the crux of this argument. Most marketers only speak to one
modality, especially in their tips. And this is a huge mistake. Most of
their tips are how-to, which is fine; how-to is very important. But they
forget the other modalities, the other mindsets that people will be in,
without a doubt, when they hit this page.

And if you do this, if you focus only on one modalities, you lose 75% of
your potential audience – 75%! Can you see how this is kind of
important? It’s very important.

However, if you create your tips using the 4 modalities in mind, which
I’m about to show you how, your sales will radically increase. It’s that
simple, because you’re hitting multiple modalities, multiple personality
types, multiple mindsets.

Now, here’s how you connect your tips to the modalities.

Your why modality, in other words if somebody approaches your VSL

with a why mindset, “Why does this work? Why am I like this?”
whatever it may be, this is the avoid tip.

Your avoid tips will really play into the why modalities, because you’re
going to start your avoid tips with like, “Here’s 3 things you got to avoid
if you want to blank.” This is why you are blank.


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In my case, “These are 3 foods you want to avoid if you want to lose
weight. In fact, these 3 foods maybe causing your weight gain. They
probably are; that’s why you’re gaining weight.”

So, this is addressing the why modality. The what-if modality is

addressed in your enjoy tip.

What-if is like, “What if you could just go about and enjoy your favorite
foods every week, and still lose weight? Wouldn’t that be great? Well
I’m going to give you 3 tips on how to do that.” That’s the what-if
modality.

The what and how-to modalities are covered in the how-to tip section.

So, what it is and how to do it is that simple. That’s all you have to
think about. The people who are the what or how-to’s are what it is,
very simple, 1-2-3, and how do I do it? They’re step-oriented thinkers.
And you’re going to address them in your how-to tip.

So, here is the tip formula. You want to make sure that you are writing
this down. Have your notes in front of you.

The tip formula begins with the benefit. In other words, what’s the
benefit for them to even listen to your tip to begin with? What’s their
benefits?

Why do it at all? Just because something is a benefit doesn’t mean

they should do it. You have to tell them why they should do it. What is
it? That’s obvious, right? What is the tip, how to do the tip, the result
after they do the tip, and then the real clincher is the mini dream story.

Now, in earlier sessions, we covered the dream story. You’ve already

written a long dream story. This is a very short dream story, one or 2
sentences. Same basic idea. You’re future-pacing your potential
buyer into seeing their life after they follow this tip, after they follow the
suggestion.

When you do that, again, you disengage, you disengage the decision-
making mind, and you enter into the desire mode. This is what we
want. You want to continually do this throughout your whole video
sales letter.

So, the dream story sequence is not just used once, the formula’s used
multiple times. This is just one or 2 sentences, granted, but it’s the
same principle. You momentarily take someone out of a decision
mode and into a desire mode.

So, that’s the tip formula: the benefit, why do it, what is it, how to do it,


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the result, which is what happens after they do it, and then their life
after they do it. We’re going to give exact examples of this coming up
in part 2 of this tutorial.

Let’s get into your basic over view of the 3 tips.

The how-to tips, again this is the linchpin. Without this, this is how you
want to position it, none of the other tips will be of use to your prospect.
And this is going to serve as a cloaked introduction to your product or
service.

In other words, you are going to lead them out, in the how-to section.
It’s going to lead them into a transition that goes right to your product.

We’ll show you how to do that next week. Don’t worry about it right
now. But when you see it, it’ll make total sense to you. It’s a cloaked
introduction. And you’re going to use your primary benefit as the
inspiration for this tip.

Now for products, like if you have a book or whatever, it should be the
driving force behind how your primary benefit works.

So, you have a primary benefit that you’re giving your reader. In my
case, my primary benefit is you get to eat your favorite foods and still
lose weight.

Well, what’s the driving force behind why that works? What’s the
principle behind why that works? We’ll get into how to discern that in
just a moment.

But what’s really cool about that is you’re going to be able to coin a
phrase. You’re going to be able to make something your own. It’s
really neat.

But for services, this should be the primary reason why your service
simply solves the prospect’s problem. For services, it’s very simple.

But both of these relate back to your primary benefit. How-to equals
primary benefit.

Now, remember, if you will, you created 3 benefits, 3 problems that

your product solves in your USP. You’re beginning to see now why the
USP is so critical, and why so many people do not having winning
sales letters, because they don’t understand their USP.

Well, guess what? Your avoid tip, it’s going to use another benefit. It’s
going to use one of your second or 3rd benefits, and it also uses what
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want you to remember this phrase: fear breeds attention.

Whenever you have a moment of fear in your life, the attention span, if
you were drifting, you are focused, you are hyper-focused.

A friend of mine told me a story about driving back from San Diego last
week, on his motorcycle, a certain guy I know, and he was driving back
at night. And maybe it was a little slick outside, California at night, it
gets a little slick on the roads, and a lot of traffic, and all of a sudden
somebody slammed on the brakes and he had to slam on his brakes,
and his bike fishtailed.

It means his back tired slid out going both ways, kind of sliding back
and forth.

Let me tell you, if ever a moment that he was not paying attention, kind
of dozing off, kind of daydreaming or whatever, he was in immediate
attention at that point.

And this is the same principle that works for your video sales letter:
fear breeds attention. So we’re going to instill that fear in the avoid
section. That’s why it comes first. We want to snap them into
attention.

This is what you want to do, you want to figure out the 3 biggest
mistakes your prospect is making when trying to achieve blank.
Whatever that blank is, is what you’re selling. And pick the juiciest one
for your avoid tip.

The biggest mistakes that people make, you have to know what the
negatives are and what the positives are of your buyers. What’s the
things that they’re doing that you know isn’t working, that your product
solves, that your product addresses? You can actually list them out 1-
2-3, if you want to. You don’t have to just pick one. “Here are the 3
biggest mistakes that you make when you go to lose weight,” or “when
you go to meet a girl,” or, “when you go to take your clothes to the dry
cleaners.” It can be anything. It doesn’t matter.

The 3 biggest mistakes people make when blank, and that’s the basic
structure for the avoid tip.

You want to use a lead-in example. And I’ve used a few of them
already here, but I’m going to use a few more.

“The #1 thing you must avoid is blank.” So, I will actually elaborate on
this and say, “The #1 thing you must avoid in order to lose weight,” or
“in order to get more money or make money on the internet,” or “to
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that your product does, “the #1 thing you must avoid,” notice the
phraseology, “You must avoid this, is blank.”

You’ve got everyone’s attention, at this point. Telling people positive

things is great. Telling them scary things, scary things, man, let me tell
you, you’ve got their attention.

Again, this is one of the things that a lot of the, every video sales letter
that’s successful does this. And the ones that are not successful, they
either don’t do it or they don’t do it right.

And here’s another lead-in example. “The number one mistake all
blank make, that you must absolutely avoid.”

“All people wanting to lose weight make, all people wanting to make
more money on the internet make,” whatever it is your audience is,
“this is the #1 mistake all of you people make.” You want it directed
directly at the user, but you don’t want to target them out.

You don’t want say, “The #1 mistake that you make.” That’s negative
rapport. We’re building positive rapport.

So, let’s say that your prospect list is, let’s just make this up, is a biz-
op. In other words, they’re trying to start their own business.

So you would say, “The #1 mistake all future entrepreneurs make, and
you absolutely have to avoid this if you want to be successful as an
entrepreneur, is blank.”

Well, you’ve got their attention without calling them out personally.
You see how that works?

Now, there’s your enjoy tips. This uses your #2 and #3 benefits from
your USP. How-to uses your primary benefit.

This is a tip that’s fun, exciting, enjoyable or just something that’s very
positive. Again, we’re going from negative to positive and then we’re
going to close with a how-to.

So, you want to ask yourself this question it figure out your best
enjoyment tips.

“What, within my benefits, creates fun, excitement, mystery, intrigue,

pleasure, positive experiences,” anything that you could think of that
would be exciting, fun, thrilling? What about it does this?

And you can find it, even in something as stale as garbage collectors.
They can find this. You just have to look for it. It might be only one


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thing. There might be only one way you can enjoy taking out your
garbage on Tuesdays, but that’s actually going to be kind of a
challenge.

But, most products and services have some enjoyment factor to them.
That’s why people are in pain, looking for an answer. They want to get
an answer for something, and that’s going to ease their pain. That’s
your task.

Now, there is a lead-in example. Now, the lead-in examples here are,
“Here’s the #1 thing that you’re going to enjoy when you blank,” when
you access this benefit. When you do the benefit that I’m about to tell
you about, the #1 thing you’re going to enjoy about it is blank.”

And one I like a lot is, “A great way to have fun with blank is to,” and
then you answer the question.

So, again using my own product as an example, “A great way to have

fun with your weight loss.”

Now, that’s something most people just don’t enjoy. Oh, fun, fun. It’s
just so much fun having to struggle to lose weight and get in shape.
But, I figured out ways to make it more enjoyable.


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