Chet Holmes International review: Core Story 7

Let me start out by saying that I was sold on Chet's services and what he does, however his organization is nothing but strong armed sales people who practice bait and switch tactics. They mislead you with information then when it comes down to price the DO NOT honor what they tell you they are going to charge you in they're own material that they send out. Let me explain, We were interested in "Chet's Core" Story program. He owns a service called Empire Research Group here's what they are supposed to do for you...

Triple your closing ratio
By Chet Holmes
Imagine I could put you in a giant stadium right now as the presenter, and the entire
audience is completely comprised of your most perfect prospects. Are you ready right
now? Could you walk out on that stage and present to every one of them and do it
perfectly? Now before you say yes, let me make the stakes higher. Before you walk out
there, the audience is told: “You had to come, but you don’t have to stay. If this person
(you) fails to keep your interest, you can simply get up and leave.”
Now let me even further complicate the situation by telling you the good news and the
bad new.
The good news: At any given time 3% of your prospects are currently in the market to
buy your product or service and looking right now to get it. Another 6‐7% are open to it,
but not currently looking.
The other 90% are divided into three nearly equal categories:
A. Not really thinking about right now.
B. Think they’re not interested (but might be, if you did a good job at presenting to
them.
C. They KNOW they’re not interested.
So let’s say you sell brooms. And let’s say it’s a fantastic broom. But remember 90% of
the audience isn’t in the market for your broom at this time. At least they think they’re
not interested. That means if you walk out there and start right off saying how great
your brooms are, 90% of your audience is going to get up and leave.
So you need to open your Stadium Pitch (as I call it), with what I call “wow’s.” This
means that all great presentations start off with information that makes your prospects
say: “Wow, I didn’t know that.” The focus must be on THEM and things of interest to
THEM, not you. So rule number one of a great presentation is that it must be focused on
the prospect and not on you (at least not initially).
I’ve built presentations that increase closing ratios from one out of ten to eight out of
ten. I’ve even built presentations that dramatically increase your ability to get in front of
prospects in the first place. How? Let’s bring that stadium pitch down to its most
practical application; Offer prospects something of value outside your product or
service. Something important to THEM.
Let me give you a case in point. I have a client who sells employee benefits and
insurance to companies. His sales team would call up a client and say: “We want to
come and talk to you about your health care benefits.”
Since 97% of prospects THINK they are happy with their current broker, that’s a really
hard call to make. However, when they created a presentation that pointed out:
(paraphrased) “The Five Dangers Facing All Employers and How Knowing What Those
DANGERS Are, Can Dramatically Reduce Costs and Increases Profits, ” it made not just
the sale go better, but also getting appointments go much better.
Meaning that information that is of value to THEM, like “Five Dangers Facing You In Your
Business, ” creates what I call a “superior access vehicle.” More….
Another client of mine sells telephone systems. Prior to the learning curve in this article,
they’d call prospects and ask the prospect: “We want to come and talk to you about
getting a new telephone system.” Needless to say, the appointment setting process was
slow going. However, when they built THE ULTIMATE PRESENTATION, one that offered
(something like): “How You’re Wasting Money In Nine Major Areas of Your Voice and
Data Spending, ” ‐‐ Suddenly, they went from getting three appointments per week (with
four salespeople trying all day) to getting 30 appointments per week. This effort is
already tripling their pipeline in a single year.
So rule number one, again, for building a killer presentation, is to have information that
is OF VALUE to your prospects ‐‐ even if they have never heard about your products or
services. Information that is above and beyond the product or service you are offering
will be considered extremely valuable to them.
I had another client that was trying to sell law books to lawyers. Over the years, they
had been reduced to talking to just the librarians in these law firms. And since the
lawyers are the ones using the law books, their ability to get new product into the
market became severely hamstrung.
We helped them build a presentation that laid out: “The Five Most Dangerous Trends
Facing All Major Law Firms Today, ” which resulted in meetings with entire committees
of lawyers. The data was excellent, legitimate and packed with bad news. Oh, did I
mention the part about bad news?
A great presentation is loaded with bad news to your prospects. Why? Because bad
news motivates. We’d get in front of a group of lawyers and show them that lawyers
keep growing, but the annual billings are flat (less money per lawyer): That their firms
will be sued (something like 44% of large law firms will be sued by unhappy or
dissatisfied clients): That the case law from which they must find their information is out
of control now, with more than THREE MILLION cases to chose from when trying to find
a single precedent. This presentation was packed with bad news. Much of this news had
nothing to do with law books. Keep in mind, it didn’t matter. Bad news motivates, even
if it’s unrelated.
Your prospect, when viewing a great deal of bad news, will suddenly feel the need to
take some action. Any action they take will make them feel better. In the case of the law
book company, every lawyer in the room wanted more information or wanted to
purchase the law books outright, after they saw the presentation.
Now don’t take this too far. The more the data in the presentation sets up a need for
your product or service, the higher your closing ratio. So in the case of the law firm, the
massive case law to be studied, created a need for law books that already studied this
for you. Plus, we tied the litigation against lawyers directly to the massive case law, so
that seemingly unrelated pieces of data, pieced together with other data made the bad
news more excruciating.
So rule number two to building a killer presentation is that the data should “set up a
buying criteria” in which your product or service becomes the most logical choice. When
my telephone client laid out all the ways most companies were wasting money on their
voice and data spending, it made the prospects open their arms and invite my client to
look at how they might help them. This almost always ended up being a new system
that would help them save money in many different ways.
What’s your client’s current buying criteria? Is it price? Easy to overcome with the right
presentation. Is it that they want to buy only from the biggest provider? Easy to
overcome with the right presentation. Is it that they don’t think they even need what it
is that you sell? Easy to overcome with the right presentation. Data can motivate your
prospects in all and any of the situations mentioned.
I have a client that is a distributor in a market where they once had only four main
competitors. In the past several years, many other types of companies have added my
client’s type of product as an add‐on. Since it’s not their main product, these hundreds
of new competitors can sell it even cheaper than my client can. Result? My client was in
big trouble and fading fast.
Presentation to the rescue
We used data, compelling and riveting data to show that these competitors didn’t know
anything about this particular industry and as a result, in the long run, poor choices in
purchasing were going to cost their penny wise and pound foolish buyers a LOT more
money later. The presentation set up a buying criteria where price became secondary to
expertise. Will that work with you? I do not know. But I DO know this. There’s no
situation where one of these presentations, properly prepared, can’t overcome any
challenge you may be facing.
Declining market? Price is the main motivator? Inability to get appointments? Inability
to get to see the higher decisions makers? All of these challenges can be met with a
fantastic presentation.
The Core Story
I call these “Your Core Story, ” or your stadium pitch and they serve another extremely
valuable purpose. I had one client who used to take four months to train a new person
on all the subtleties of why a prospect should buy their product. The Core Story used
data as the motivator and suddenly, this core story could train an outsider how to
REALLY sell this product and in a single pass through the information.
So a great core story makes for a fantastic new‐hire training tool.
How to build a core story
Let me tell you, it isn’t easy. But greatness never is. If you want to be the ultimate player
in your market, you have to take the time to carefully craft one of these, using data as a
powerful access vehicle as well as an urgent motivator for your otherwise slow moving
clients to make faster and more urgent decisions. Before you read the steps, and
become discouraged, let me tell you that there is a group that simply does this for you.
You do nothing but answer 60 to 90 minutes worth of questions about your industry and
your products and four to six weeks later, viola, they come back to you with a KILLER
presentation; filled with poignant and significant research about your market. Research
that your client will find fascinating, research that is compelling enough to get you more
meetings; and critical, research that is highly motivating to get your client to want to
buy faster—and research that, hopefully, in some way, “sets up a buying criteria” where
YOU are the MOST logical choice. YOU are the ONLY one from whom these prospects
what to buy.
Four weeks later, they will come back with not just the research, not just the facts, but
visually arresting graphics. Yes, a KILLER presentation has graphics on every panel. Vivid
visuals, photo’s that triple the impact of your words, graphs that visually illustrate your
points, pie charts that point out their problems, and dollar signs in all the right places to
show them how you help them save, earn or increase some area of their world.
85% of the information in the brain is taken in through the eyes. Studies show that
visuals nearly triple the communication experience. So don’t even think about
presenting anything to anyone, if you’re not going to use visual aids.
In any event, this group does a turn key job. You give them an interview and they turn
around and give you an awesome stadium pitch, fully illustrated with your logo on every
panel. If you want to know how you might use one of these and you’re not sure, it’s
certainly free to talk to this group.
They’re called Empire Research Group and they are little known outside the circle of my
clients, as most companies are not wise enough to utilize data this effectively. This is to
your benefit. You can schedule a one‐on‐one session with an expert from Empire here.
Empire’s research and Core Story‐building services began many years ago when I was
building these core stories for my billion dollar clients. Clients would pay me $80, 000 to
build these and I would commission out all the research to an elite team of top
researchers. I would then sit around on the floor (too much data to put on a desk) with
piles of the raw data all around me and begin to see where I could piece together all
these disconnected pieces of raw data to create the “wow’s” or find the “bad news”
that would motivate ‐‐ at the same time as position my clients. This process alone is
critical and difficult. In one case we were building a presentation for a client who
wanted to target day‐spa’s.
The researchers got me the numbers and I saw that there were 16, 000 day spa’s in the
U.S. But to my utter shock, another piece of disconnected data showed that there were
maybe 200 of them only 15 years ago. Bad news if you’re a day spa. Your market is
gruelingly competitive. Two pieces of data over a 15 year period, put together on a
single panel to equal bad news!
After I finished building the raw data into final product, I would then pass back my
finished product to the researchers to show them how I had utilized their data.
After years and years of doing this, this very bright research team began to get the hang
of this process and they began to go a lot further with the assignments I gave them.
Before I knew it, they were getting these things pretty far along and that’s when I
realized that this service could now be expanded outside of the billion dollar clients I
was accustomed to working with.

So what I once charged $80, 000 to produce, you can now get for a mere four figure
investment, affordable by almost any company or sole individual looking to slaughter
the competition.
Now, that said, if you cannot afford a four figure investment to simply have someone do
this for you, here’s what you need to do on your own.

SO I contacted Empire through the website and left my information to contact me. They also offered to send me the "Free Report" that was sent to me above. It came to me immediately and I was impressed. Not long after I was contacted by Craig Sours. I explained who I was and my situation. He became frustrated and belligerent when he found out that the conversation wasn't going his way, that being he wanted to talk to the other superiors in the company before he could "Help me". I tried to explain to him again that in this structure that would not happen as we have a silent partner. He became more belligerent with me and tried to ram his sales pitch down my throat. I told him look I just need a price for this "Core Story" so I can bring it back to the Silent partner and that we were already sold on the concept just give me a price.
He then quoted me $15, 600.00 for the "Core Story" I then asked him why he quoted me this price when it clearly says in the free report
"So what I once charged $80, 000 to produce, you can now get for a mere four figure
investment, affordable by almost any company or sole individual looking to slaughter
the competition."
$15, 600.00 IS NOT FOUR FIGURES

He by then tried to tell me it was out dated information. I said how can that be as it was sent to me hours ago?
He then tried to say it was a typo. He then tried to berate me more and then tried to turn the tables on me. I asked him one last time if he wanted to rethink this quote and that I would understand as you probably work on commission and you need to make money but this is not what the report says. He stood by this and ended the conversation.

I wrote a letter via the CHI web site and stated that I wanted to talk to someone in higher management about this. Mind you Craig told me he was the highest level I could go and "Good luck trying to do that". Low and behold I received a call from Ted Miller VP of Chet Holmes Intl.

This guy is very one sided and the type that you can't converse with because he wants to do all of the talking. He then went on and on and tried to explain that this report is talking about coaching services and how I need to bring my partners to the table so we can by into a $35, 000.00 program. I again explained my situation telling him that was NOT going to happen. He then explained that they had different levels that you can buy for the Core Story
A $4000.00 program for just research
A$6000.00 program for something else and
A $15, 000.00 program for everything turn key soup to nuts.

I then thought we were getting to what I needed BUT when I asked him if he could send me this info in a quote he back peddled and said he couldn't do that. I then asked why and he started to berate me just like Craig did. This is clearly a tactic that is taught from top down. Needless to say he ended the conversation asking me "How he could help me more" I laughed and said ? I clearly understand that you don't and wished him a nice day.

I want to believe that Chet Holmes has great information but I cannot believe because this is his company and they clearly take orders from him. All they really care about is taking as much money as they can from you and not practicing the "HELP" as they promote. This is fraud and bait & switch which is low level tactics of a fly by night sales organization.

I am VERY disappointed and the sad part of it is that I offered a sale of they're services up to them on a silver platter. All I wanted was pricing. Clearly these guys are Greedy to the core.