The Irresistible Offer by Mark Joyner | Book Summary

In The Irresistible Offer, Mark Joyner shows you how to sell effectively using the method of marketing known as The Irresistible Offer.

In today’s world, people are bombarded by a massive amount of marketing every day and are forced to make a quick evaluation to survive. In one of the best sales books, The Irresistible Offer: How to Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less, Mark Joyner shows you how to get through to customers and sell your product or service in three seconds or less.

This book presents a method of marketing known as The Irresistible Offer that you can apply to your business to sell effectively.

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Chapter 1: The Magic Window

What if you had a magic window that showed you the truth and hid what was false. And you knew how to act to do what is right, profitable, and good. Mark Joyner presents that magic window on the business world to be The Irresistible Offer.

Chapter 2: The Core Imperative of Business

In business, “there is one thing, and one thing only, that you must do to be in business:”

The Core Imperative of Business – the idea of “making an offer,” because “if you are not offering your customer some form of quid pro quo, you are not in business”

In the simplest form, business can be distilled down to the offer or “quid pro quo.” So, the Core Imperative of Business tells us to simply make an offer.

Chapter 3: The Big Four Questions

We all have unspoken inner dialogues within us:

Unspoken Inner Dialogue – “the internal dialogue we say to ourselves unconsciously that dictates many of our actions”

During the sales process, our unspoken inner dialogues usually invoke the following big four questions:

The Big Four Questions – the questions asked by your consumers before they make any purchase, which your marketing must answer, or the sale will not close:

1. “What are you offering?”: The prospect evaluates the good or service that you are offering.
2. “How much?”: The prospect determines if the good or service is being offered at acceptable quality at a reasonable price.
3. “What’s in it for me?”: The prospect is trying to figure out how they benefit from the good or service. “So, sell you benefits, not your features.”
4. “Why should I believe you?”: The prospect must determine if you are trustworthy enough to provide payment.

The first three questions address the buyer’s logic, while the fourth appeals to the buyer’s emotion. You should not only address emotion because you will have only fools as your customers. Instead, Mark Joyner shows you how to make The Irresistible Offer.

Chapter 4: What Is The Irresistible Offer?

Mark Joyner defines The Irresistible Offer as follows:

The Irresistible Offer – “an identity-building offer central to a product, service, or company where the believable return on investment is communicated so clearly and efficiently that it’s immediately apparent, you’d have to be a fool to pass it up”

The offer is the “antitheses of old-school marketing through coercion.” For example, Mark Joyner discusses how Domino’s Irresistible Offer revolutionized the pizza industry by creating the guarantee: “30 minutes or less… or it’s free.” This offer captured the attention of millions, even though the pizza was not that good.

The Irresistible Offer cuts through the noise and gets people to buy. Thus, “the Irresistible Offer is so powerful that it must be the core of your business. Before you engage in any other marketing activities, The Irresistible Offer must be your starting point.”

Chapter 5: What Is Not The Irresistible Offer?

Mark Joyner wants The Irresistible Offer for your business to be clear and not ambiguous. Therefore, to help provide understanding, the offer is not the following:

• Special Offer: These offers are typically given as one-time deals to rely on the influence of scarcity. However, The Irresistible Offer is vital to the identity of your product, service, or business.
• An “irresistible” Offer: These offers are compelling but simply stack feature after feature to coerce customers into buying.
• Statement of Fact: These offers state facts that you find essential. However, no one cares that you “have been in business for X number of years.”
• Bragging Rights: These offers are ways for you to brag; however, no one cares about how great your company is or the award you have won.
• Benefit: Showing the benefits of your product or service can capture interest but usually comes with skepticism. The Irresistible Offer will leave your customer receptive to buying instead of being skeptical.
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP): The USP typically states what makes your company unique; however, uniqueness is not enough and can be irrelevant. Instead, The Irresistible Offer is more powerful as it gets people to buy.

Chapter 6: Elements of The Irresistible Offer

Mark Joyner presents The Irresistible Offer as composed of three elements. First, you need to make a High ROI offer:

1. High ROI Offer – presents a high Return on Investment (ROI) offer to the customer by providing more value than the money they paid for the product or service

Your High ROI offer needs to be a separate entity from the second element, the Touchstone, and the offer presented within it:

2. Touchstone – “communicates the essence of your offer in less than three seconds” in a clear, simple, brief, and immediate manner; addresses the following points:

• What are you offering?: “Here’s what we are selling.”
• How much?: “Here’s how much it will cost.”
• What’s in it for me?: “Here’s what is in it for you.”
• Why should I believe you?: “Here’s why you should trust us.”

“And, no matter what, your Touchstone must say: Here’s a great offer. Here’s a deal for you so great that you’d be a fool to pass it up.” Last, the bolder you present the Touchstone, the harder you must work deeply to show prospects that you are believable:

3. Believability – “without Believability, you could offer the world, and no one would take it from you;” the magical formulas include using proof and gaining credibility:

• Proof: Demonstrates the success of your offer through three types of evidence:
• Social – using testimonials to show that others have tried and are fulfilled
  • Technical – using scientific validation that your product fulfills its purpose
  • Factual – presenting research that shows the success of similar products
• Credibility: Shows that you have the authority through the following:
  • Endorsements – having celebrities or authorities vouch for your offer
  • High-Profile Customers – showing that large firms successful use you
  • Qualifications – citing certification or having an association certify quality
  • Awards and Recognition – presenting awards that your product has won
  • Logic – appealing to your prospects’ logical mind to spur critical thinking

You can use the mnemic device, “How To Be Rich?” to remember HTB, as the answer to riches is The Irresistible Offer.

The Irresistible Offer Creation Process

Next, Mark Joyner shows you the order in which to create The Irresistible Offer so that you can start marketing:

1. Develop a High ROI Offer: You need to provide the customer an ROI, so do this before anything else.
2. Create a Compelling Touchstone: This provides “the core of your marketing campaign,” so everything you do should align with your message.
3. Believability: Last, you need to create trust with your customer to make your offer and marketing have a lasting impact.

The Irresistible Offer Sales Process

Finally, it is time to sell to your customer in this chronological order:

1. Your Touchstone: This will generate interest and excitement in your customer, so they are willing to dive further into the offer.
2. Believability: Next, you need to capitalize on their interest by establishing trust to get the customer to dig even deeper.
3. High ROI Offer: Now present the offer and close the sale, as your customer should be primed to buy at this point.

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Chapter 7: The Great Formula

In The Irresistible Offer, Mark Joyner presents The Great Formula to getting a steady stream of repeat business from raving fans:

The Great Formula – “the way to long-lasting business success using these steps:”

1. Create The Irresistible Offer from the previous chapters
2. Present it to a Thirsty Crowd – “your warm market of the people who are eager for your products and services without having to be told they need them”
3. Sell them a Second Glass – “any time you sell a product or service to already existing customers, you are selling them a Second Glass”

Second Glass

The second glass is where you will profit the most, as the “cost of selling to an existing customer is far less than the cost of acquiring a new one.”

Delivery Techniques: After dazzling your thirsty crowd, you can leverage that relationship and sell them a Second Glass using the following techniques:

• Upsell – encouraging customers to buy something additional or at a higher cost
• Cross-Sell – selling complementary or related products to an existing customer
• Follow-Up – selling something after some time has passed
• Continuity (Subscription) – providing a product or service on a habitual basis

The first two methods can be employed immediately after the first sale is completed. While the follow-up occurs sometime after and continuity is reoccurring.

Recipes: There are several tactics that move from the conceptual to the real world:

• Education: Teach your customers how to use or better use your products.
• Consulting and Service: Provide expert consulting to get the results they want.
• Package Deals: Bundle your product together with a few related products.
• Insurance and Warranties: Provide policies that profit with statistical certainty.
• Logical Additions: Provide logical complements that work with your product.
• Referrals: Send customers others who provide complementary products.

How to Keep the Door Open: These methods help you maintain the relationship with your customers:

• Thank You Cards: Appreciate your customers by sending them a thank you.
• Birthday Cards: Celebrate and provide your customers a gift to get them back.
• Service Due Reminders: Remind your customers that they need to come back.
• Newsletters: Deliver information that is relevant and eventually present offers.
• Special Events: Invite your customers to come by for a memorable event.

When maintaining a relationship with your customers, you need to be creative and worthwhile, so they come back for a Second Glass.

Chapter 8: Offer Intensifiers

Mark Joyner shows you how to boost the effectiveness of The Irresistible Offer by using offer intensifiers:

Offer Intensifiers – “devices that will boost an offer’s effectiveness, sometimes in the extreme”

When creating The Irresistible Offer, first establish your High ROI offer and then use these steps to intensify it:

• Urgency: Create an expiring offer that can be either contrived or genuine.
• Added Value: Stack an unexpected bonus of genuine value.
• Risk Reversal: Remove risk in the customer’s mind by backing your offer with money-back guarantees, payment plans, free samples, warranties, results-based payments, free support, trial periods, and more.
• Scarcity: Play to people’s fear of missing out if they do not buy now.
• Ease: Make it easy for your customers to do business with you.
• Uniqueness: Show customers that you solely can deliver the product they want.
• Brand Value and Positioning: Position your product to be one of the best.
• Recommendations (most powerful): Have others recommend your product for you using word of mouth.

For more on levers of influence you can use to boost an offer’s effectiveness, check out Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (book summary) by Robert Cialdini.

Pricing Tricks

You can employ psychological principles to set prices in a way to facilitate your customer’s decision to buy:

• The Law of 7s and 9s: End your prices in a 7 or 9 can increase sales.
• Price Increase for Perceived Value: Set higher prices to raise perceived value.
• Contrast: Compare your product to a higher-priced one to make your product seem cheaper. Or use Discounts, Rebates, and Coupons to create contrast.

Chapter 9: The Offer Continuum

There are three parts to marketing:

• Art – “envisioning and executing campaigns that work”
• Science – running well-formed experiments like A-B split-testing to observe what works and what doesn’t
• Magic – “having to do with your own enthusiasm, belief, and confidence affecting your results”

In The Irresistible Offer, Mark Joyner provides the Offer Continuum tool to evaluate your offer, determine strengths and weaknesses, and figure out the flavor of your Touchstone. The tool consists of several questions about any offer so that you can answer with a rating from 1 (not at all) to 10 (totally):

• How obvious is the need? If your offer is not apparent, construct your Touchstone such that you address your customer’s needs.
• How genuine is the need? Note that needs and wants are different. If the customer does not need what you offer, that will be an issue.
• How common is a solution for the problem? If others are offering similar solutions, then you need to discover and show your uniqueness.
• Can you demonstrate a return on investment? Use logic, facts, research, charts, recommendations, and more to show ROI to your customers.
• How emotional is your offer? Appeal to emotional needs as people want to buy something that feels great and alleviates their fears.
• How timely is your offer? If customers do not have an urgent need for your product, then you need to figure out a compelling reason to get others to buy.
• How does yours stack up against known competition? If you are not the best, you can improve your product to be better or out position your competition.
• How do you compare to the known competition on price? Position yourself as the superior solution and charge at premium prices.

For more on marketing, check out the book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan (book summary) by Allan Dib.

Chapter 10: Great Offers through History

Mark Joyner provides many examples of excellent Irresistible Offers throughout history:

• “Be all you can be.” – The U.S. Army got people to leave their old life behind and join the Army to unleash their potential and be the best.
• “You give us 22 minutes. We’ll give you the world.” – WINS Radio provided their listeners a worthwhile news broadcast.
• “We report. You decide.” – Fox News presented itself as an objective source of information amongst the many news agencies out there.
• “Fanatical Support” – RackSpace Managed Hosting built a reputation and sales process that provides believability within their hosting market.
• “We’ll beat anyone’s advertised price, or your mattress is freeeeee.” – Sit n’ Sleep guaranteed customers that they will get the best price on mattresses.
• We will honor the lowest price you can find for up to 60 days after your purchase.” – Circuit City gave a strong ROI on the devices you buy.
• “48-hour parts service anywhere in the world–or Caterpillar pays.” – Caterpillar Tractor alleviated a fear of equipment being down for too long.
• “Ten years trouble-free operation.” – Maytag claimed their washers or dryers should not break over ten years.
• “If you’re not satisfied for any reason, we’ll take it back without a receipt–no questions asked.” – Nordstrom wanted customers to be satisfied.
• “The 100 Percent Solution” – RE/MAX allowed their real estate agents to keep 100 percent of their commissions while just having to pay a monthly subscription.
• “Before and After” – Merle Norman Cosmetics used nonverbal communication of before and after photos to differentiate their product.
• “Free Samples” – Mrs. Fields Cookies invites customers to try their free samples, which has stimulated the sales of their cookies.

Download the PDF Book Summary for The Irresistible Offer

Chapter 11: Word of Mouth from Flaming Lips

The most powerful marketing tool is word-of-mouth marketing. Mark Joyner shows you how to use The Irresistible Offer to stimulate word-of-mouth marketing:

Word-of-Mouth Marketing – “the sometimes-passive transmission of your marketing message from one person to the next simply through personal verbal referral”

Viral Marketing

In the last decade, viral marketing of the biggest fads in word-of-mouth marketing:

Viral Marketing – “an analog of Word-of-Mouth Marketing that uses technology to transmit your marketing message as a biological virus transmits itself from one host to the next;” comprised of two elements:

1. A Program – a set of instructions that communicates information, either good or bad, about your business
2. A Delivery Mechanism – the mediums used to deliver these instructions, including images, sounds, words, and memes

In The Irresistible Offer, Mark Joyner discusses virulence as an analogy to word-of-mouth marketing:

Virulence – the amount and rate of viral spread, which is impacted by the immunity of the host (presence of antibodies), host strength or weakness, replication speed, and efficiency of delivery

He then applies virulence to word-of-mouth marketing by measuring the copulation rate:

Copulation Rate – “the rate at which a Viral Marketing System spawns new users of the system” per a given period of time

For example, a ten-day copulation rate of 1.5 means that a single user in your system will spread the marketing message to 1.5 new people over the next ten days. You can increase your copulation rate by increasing yours through these factors: trust, adequate exposure, host strength, replication speed, and efficiency of delivery.

General Model of Word-of-Mouth

The Word-of-Mouth model is divided into the following steps:

• The Frame: Being the most important, this step is the mindset that your prospect comes away from their first interaction with you. They hear about your product or service through other people, email, web, etc., and then they are sent to…
• Entry Point: This step is the first exposure to formal marketing, including blogs, ads, lead magnets, testimonials, social media, etc. Instead of solely relying on your positive frame, you should have a multi-step process to provide full details about your product or service. Then, give the prospect the option to…
• Sign Up: This step is where people register their information, especially for freebies, to access your product or service via website, course, downloads, etc. If they drop off here, you can reengage to improve conversion.
• Target Behavior: This step is the main reason why your Viral System exists because your approach needs to be targeted to achieve a particular action. For example, your customer applies your e-book or uses your product or service to take action to solve a problem.
• Training: This step educates your customers on telling others about their experience with your product or service, so their friends can also benefit. Specifically, there are two parts to training:
  • Why they should spread the word (incentive) and
  • How to do it.
• Transmission: This step is where your incentivized infectee spreads the message regarding your business, product, or service to others. Within an affiliate marketing system, transmission can be tracked through tracking links assigned to each user. For example, one reader tells their friend and instills . . .
• The Frame: The new infectee enters your word-of-mouth funnel with the right mindset, and you have gone full circle.

In the word-of-mouth model, each step embodies a viral choke point in which you can affect your marketing and campaigns to improve your virulence and copulation rate. Thus, you should track and test each chokepoint. Focus on the earlier steps, as affecting conversion has a much more significant impact on overall copulation.

General Tips on Viral Systems

There are some general tips on how to improve your viral systems:

• Make It Easy: People need a system that is clear, convenient, and void of obstacles, so they will more like go through it.
• Decrease Your Steps: The number of steps in your sales process is inversely proportional to the sales responses you will get. Fewer steps equal more sales.
• Be Excellent: People like positive, noteworthy things, so work to take 10X actions and provide the best product or service that you can.
• Provide Unique Incentives: You should be creative and broaden your horizons when offering incentives that will motivate your customers to spread the word.
• Monetary Incentives are the Worst: People enjoy being rewarded money, but you should not use them to make up for the faults in your product or service.
• Study Other Viral Systems: Research other companies to see what works well for them and apply it to your business to continually improve.

The Irresistible Offer is the Ultimate Word-of-Mouth Tool

Mark Joyner provides the four critical realizations for why the Irresistible Offer is the ultimate word-of-mouth tool:

1. Words “are the most efficient, portable, and speedy delivery mechanism of all as you can spread them through people, paper, or email.
2. Genuine enthusiasm for your product or service is the best incentive to cause viral transmission.
3. You are responsible for the generation and involvement of your word-of-mouth systems, whether you like or dislike them.
4. You have little control over anything in life, including what others say about you. However, you can use word-of-mouth marketing to influence messaging greatly.

Next, Mark Joyner connects The Irresistible Offer to word-of-mouth marketing as follows as they are integrally connected:

1. A High ROI Offer: This element creates raving fans who talk about your product, have a high replication rate, and are efficient at delivery.
2. Believability: These factors will kill immunity by eliminating the mistrust from your prospect. Distrust causes prospects to become more immune.
3. Touchstone: This element creates the ultimate virus with the essential aspects of the delivery vehicle and program to make a huge impact.

Last, the other methods of delivery as examined as to why they are subpar to word-of-mouth marketing tactics:

• Images: Even though images can convey meaning instantly, people don’t simply carry relevant images with marketing messages.
• Brand: This tactic has some drawbacks, such as it takes time to build a great brand, you do not have much control over the association, your message may be ambiguous, and your branding may not apply to the business.
• Meme: These objects can effectively message; however, memes are ambiguous as they can mean anything and everything.

Download the PDF Book Summary for The Irresistible Offer

Next Steps: Check out the Irresistible Offer

In his book, The Irresistible Offer, Mark Joyner shows you how to communicate with your customers in three seconds or less and sell effectively. This book presents a method of marketing known as The Irresistible Offer, which consists of three parts: a High ROI Offer, Believability, and a Touchstone.

I hope you are inspired to beg your own copy of the book here. Also, for further reading of offers, check out the book, $100M Offers (book summary) by Alex Hormozi. For more books on marketing, check out Building a StoryBrand (book summary) by Donald Miller.