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SUCCESS SECRETSFROM TOP COSSMAN STUDENTS
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SUCCESS SECRETSFROM TOP COSSMAN STUDENTSIn this e-book marketing guru E. Joseph Cossman shows you the
same 10 steps he used time and time again to sell over 20 millionCossman products ... and, three Cossman students show you how
they applied these 10 steps to starting and building their ownbusinesses, selling three completely different kinds of products.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net
INTRODUCTION
E. Joseph Cossman and his son Howard bring a combined
experience of 75 years in manufacturing and marketing to
Cossman International, Incorporated. This exper ience is
based upon the national and international sales of 20 million
Cossman products ... ranging from toys ... to household items
... to art prints ... to insecticides ... to sporting goods.
Cossman International was built using “entrepreneurial”
methods. This enabled us to make each dollar spent do the
work of 50. It minimized our r isk and allowed us to enjoy
extreme profit margins. And, although we never had more than
a handful of employees at any given time, we were able to
take a substantial market share from companies hundreds of
times our size. Over the years, we sold over 20 million Cossman
products. And, no matter what type of product we were sell-
ing, we always followed the same 10 steps, which are presented
to you in this e-book. This e-book also shows you how three
different people, Bob Hall, Debbie Young and Dr. Murray
Davidson, used our 10 steps to start and build their own
successful business.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 2
10 STEPSFOR MAKING MORE MONEY
IN YOUR OWN BUSINESS
Welcome to this special E-Book of E. Joseph Cossman’s 10 Steps to
Success”. By reading this e-book, you're taking your first step to
success because in this E-Book Mr. Cossman is going to show you
how you can start and build your own business, doing something you
really enjoy. Mr. Cossman's 10 Steps are not business theories or
economic guess work, they are based on proven practical steps
that produce success. They produce financial independence,
wealth, personal freedom and security for people all over the world.
In this E-Book, you’ll see that you don’t need education or special
skills to be successful. You don’t need business experience or
contacts, and you don’t need a lot of money. All you need is to know
what to do and how to do it, step by step, and that’s exactly what
Mr. Cossman will show you in this E-Book. The 10 steps you'll be
reading worked for Mr. Cossman and they're working for countless
other people, people from all walks of life and all around the world,
and by the end of this E-Book you will know beyond a shadow of a
doubt that they will work just as well for you.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 3
but by the end of this book, you will know 3
things ... You will know how we did it, you will know how our students
did it, and most important of all, you will know how you can do it. In
addition to those rewards, you will get something else by reading this
E-Book, if you are Locked into a 9 to 5 job this book will show you how
to break out of that mold and start an enterprise on your own,
without quitting your job. If you are in your own business, this book will
show you how to increase your business without increasing your
overhead. And if you are starting in your own business for the very
first time, regardless of your age, or color, education, financial
condition, this book will show you how to take your abilities and turn
them into an enterprise that will support you in style for the rest of
your life. I came out of the Army after World War II, I had no money,
maybe $200 to $300 dollars, I was married and had a baby girl, and
I felt very lucky in finding a job for $35 dollars a week. $35 dollars a
week, and I felt lucky getting that job, it was back in the 1940’s. And
with my first pay check I put a down payment on a typewriter, and
I began writing letters to people that I met overseas, asking if they
had any need for American merchandise. I’d work at my job for 8
hours and I’d come home and on my kitchen table, peck out these
Hello, my name is E. Joseph Cossman and in this
E-Book, I’m going to show you some little known
secrets that enabled us to sell over 20 million Cossman
products. I know that sounds like an amazing state-
ment,
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 4
letters. I did this for one year, I went down dozens of dead ends, I
could never connect. Then, at the end of the year, only using
postage and stationary, mind you and a very limited budget (how
much can you spend on $35 dollars a week with keeping a family),
a very limited budget at the end of the year, I found 30,000 cases of
soap, being advertised by someone in New York City, I found it in a
little classified ad in the New York Times. And, Working off my kitchen
table, I got the rights to that soap and using postage and stationary,
I sold that soap. And, while I’m holding down a $35 dollar a week job,
I made $30,000 on that order. And that was the first revelation in my
life, not that I could make $30,000, but for the first time in my life I
realized I didn’t have to work for other people. You take the average
person, they think the only way you can go through life is to work for
others. But here I was 28 years old, no money, no education, and no
contacts, no connections and yet only using the American postage
stamp and an envelope I took in 30 grand. What would $30,000 be
today?...that would be a half a million dollars today. So, if you ask
me, does it take any skill, does it take education, does it take know-
how does it take contacts, I say no, because I speak from experi-
ence. All it takes, believe me, is direction. You can have the best
product in the world, you can have the best motivation in the world,
you can have best education in the world, you can have all the
money in the world, but if you don’t have direction, you’ll never go
anywhere. And that’s what I teach, I teach direction.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 5
EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS
Well first let me define exclusive rights. When you have the exclusive
rights to another person's product or service you literally own that
product or service even though you’re not manufacturing it, or you
don’t own the tooling, but every time that product or service is sold
anywhere in the world part of the profit comes back to you, because
any sale has to go through you. So, you literately control the
product. And this is the basis of what I teach, how to get exclusive
rights. You never pay for exclusive rights, some people may try to
charge you for the rights, walk away, because there are more
products looking for people like you believe me, than people like
you looking for products. Don’t get loaded with an inventory. If
someone tries to load you up with 15 to 20,000 of his widgets, walk
away. You don’t have to pay for exclusive rights, you don’t have to
buy inventory. What you are doing is making a contribution of your
time, effort and experience. Let me put the shoe on the other foot,
let’s assume that you are a manufacturer and let’s assume that you
are manufacturing a new unusual neck tie (this is an example), and
you're selling the neck tie to stores all over the country and selling it
to wholesalers all over the country, I call you and I ask you , are you
selling your neck ties to mail order houses? ... and you’ll say no. Are
you selling your tie to consumers by direct mail? ... you’ll say no. Are
you selling your tie to military commissaries? ... you’ll say no. Are you
selling your tie overseas, outside of the country? ... 96% chance
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 6
you’ll say no, because only 4 companies out of 100 sell to foreign
markets.” Now you go down the 22 ways I teach you how to sell a
product and you query that manufacture and the chances are in
your favor He will say no I’m not hitting these other markets. Now,
what if I come back to you and Say “Can I have the exclusive rights
to your neck tie in fields you're not covering, non-competitive fields?”
And the minute you sign the agreement with that manufacturer, and
incidentally in our marketing program we have a 2 page agreement
which is the exact agreement we made with the people who make
Fly Cake and you're welcome to copy it if you want, but once you
sign that agreement with the manufacturer, you own his factory. You
can call the product Cossman Product, you don’t have to call it his
name. Now there are many ways of getting the Exclusive Rights,
aside from contacting a manufacturer. I want to quickly go through
ways we got Exclusive Rights, and you can apply them to your own
needs. As an example, how did we get Exclusive Rights to a product
called Fly Cake, which was a fly killer, an insecticide. One of the
things I stress in our program is not to touch a product or service
unless every time it’s sold part of the profit has to come back to you.
And to get to this stage it means that you must have the Exclusive
Rights to a product or service. Now how do you get the Exclusive
Rights to a product or service. Well in our program we show you 17
ways to do that. Let me just show you one of those ways. Would you
believe I made a million dollars, reading the classified ad in the
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 7
newspaper? Let me explain. A few years ago I opened the classified
ads of the Los Angeles Times. And I saw a little three line ad, it stated,
send us $1.00 and we will send you 2 Fly Cakes, it kills flies. That’s all
the ad said. I sent $1.00 to these people and I got a rather unusual
product, shaped like a donut, when a fly touched it he died. A solid
insecticide that would last a year. I called up the man who made this
product and I asked him, how do you sell this product? He said for
the past 20 years we only sold it one way, we sell it in the classified
ad section of the newspaper. I couldn’t believe my ears, here was a
man with an incredible product. Only selling it one way. I asked him
for the Exclusive Rights to this product and I told him I could sell it 22
ways. We entered into an agreement, he gave me a letter saying I
had the Exclusive Rights to Fly Cake, which meant that no one in the
world could buy Fly Cake, unless it cleared through me. And every
time Fly Cake was sold no matter who bought one, part of the profit
came back to me. I packaged the product, I called it Cossman Fly
Cake, and you couldn’t go anywhere in the world without finding Fly
Cake. I want to make it clear that I didn’t pay a penny for the
Exclusive Rights and I didn’t have to buy any inventory. The manu-
facturer made the product, I sold it, I carried the account but it was
my product because I had that piece of paper saying I had the
Exclusive Rights. Here’s a tremendous product going to waste. So I
met with him, and I said can I have the rights to your product? And
I will put it all over the world. He said, will you give me a guarantee?
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 8
I said what do you want? He said will you guarantee to sell 50,000 a
year? I said no, I won’t guarantee to sell 50,000 a year but I will make
this guarantee, you give me a years trial, and if I don’t sell 50,000, I’ll
give you back everything I've done on your product. He said fair
enough. He gave me that piece of paper, I packaged the product,
I called it Cossman Fly Cake, and in three years I sold 8 million Fly
Cake. You couldn’t go anywhere in the world without finding Fly
Cake. Now that was my product. He manufactured it, but if an
inquiry came to him, he had to turn it over to me. Now that's
classified ads. Another example is reading newspapers. How many
times have you seen a story in a newspaper, you say to yourself,
there’s a great product and then you turn the page. Don’t turn the
page, contact the person. How many times have you read a news-
paper or a magazine and found a story in there describing an
interesting product or service. And you say to yourself, that would
make a good product or service to put on the market, and you don’t
do anything about it, you just turn the page. Well that will never
happen to you again after reading this E-Book, because I’m going
to show you an example that will stay in your mind for the rest of your
life. What is it? Sometime ago I was reading an article in the paper
describing a product called Halt, used by mail men to prevent dog
bites. A ferocious dog approaches the mailman, the mailman merely
squirts this in the dog’s face, it disorients the dog for ten minutes with
no ill affect to the animal. I wrote to the people who made this
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 9
product and I asked them, could you make a similar product for me
called Rebuff? I want women to carry it in their purse as a deterrent,
in case they get mugged. The people on the phone said no problem,
we will put it in the same container, we’ll even put your name on it,
and you’ll look like the manufacturer. I want you to know that in 6
months we sold 300,000 ReBuff, at $2.98 each. On my word of honor,
I never met the manufacturer, I never visited his factory, all I did was
send him labels and he did the drop shipping for me. Now, could you
do something like that with my direction? You certainly could.
Sometimes you can open up a trade magazine and you see an
interesting story on close outs, I found a man in North Hollywood who
had a product called a Spud Gun, it shoots potato pellets. He had
the tooling laying in his cellar for 10 years, 10 years, and he had a
100,000 guns laying in his cellar for 10 years. I said give me the rights
for that gun, what do you want for the tooling? I’m ashamed to tell
you I bought that tooling for $500. I sold 2 million Spud Guns. It was
called the Cossman Spud Gun, I didn’t invent the gun, I didn’t make
the tooling. Another way you can do it is to create a product
yourself. I’ve had 20 big winners in my life time, and I only created 2
of them, one of them I created was the ant farm, almost everybody
knows what an ant farm is. Well, when I came out with the ant farm
there were 50 manufactures in ant farms in the United States. What
made my ant farm different was #1 it was wasn’t made of glass, it
was made of plastic, all these other farms were made of glass, and
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 10
they didn’t keep abreast of modern technology, you can take my
ant farm apart and clean it out, but what really made it big was no
matter where you bought an ant farm I come up with the idea of
supplying live ants. It was a coupon in the ant farm and you mailed
it to us, we shipped you 15 live ants. We were selling a million ant
farms a year, at almost every school in the United States. That’s a
case of where I now had a proprietary right, an exclusive right, and
it was my product. Now I know many people reading this E-Book are
saying to themselves, look, I work at a 9 to 5 job, I’m making $300 a
week, I have a couple of children in school, why should anybody
give me the exclusive rights to their product? Well if you will follow my
direction they will give it to you. Now I don’t want to insult your
intelligence and say you can pick up the phone and call a large
manufacturer, and say I want the rights to your product, you have to
talk intelligently, you have to let him know that you know how to
proceed. And that is the basic premise of what we teach. To have
you learn how to proceed intelligently. I want to go back and say I
mentioned in your field of interest, because if you get involved with
something you don’t enjoy, it’s a hard way to make money. So look
into yourself and see what you enjoy doing. One of the principles I
stress in our Programs, is to do something you enjoy doing. If you try
to make money doing something you're not enjoying, it’s a hard way
to make money. To stress that point, I'll give you a good example. My
son is an artist, he’s a pretty good artist. What did he do? He took his
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 11
artwork and created a clock. Instead of numbers, he put in the 12
faces of cats. Alright, he had a product, now he wanted to put it on
the market. What did he do? He created a mail order ad and only
using postage and stationery, no other investments, he solicited mail
order houses. One mail order house ran this in their catalog. They
gave him $150,000 worth of business. Other mail order houses also
gave him business, and he also sold his artwork on the internet at
http://home.earthlink.net/~hcossman/index.html ... But, the point I
want to stress is, here’s a man who did something he enjoys doing
and then turned it into a commercial venture. Now could you do
that? You certainly could. Let’s assume you're an avid fisherman,
you work 9 to 5 everyday for your bread and butter. You don’t
particularly like your job but you need it for survival. But every
chance you get, you go fishing. Because you’re an avid fisherman,
you would be one of the first to recognize an unusual new product
in the fishing field. Okay, you would find these new products in Trade
Magazines that cater to the fisherman. Let’s assume you open up
the fishing magazine and you find an unusual fishing pole. A transis-
torized fishing pole. It attracts fish to that pole. And you would say to
yourself, this would make a good product. What is my next step? The
next step is to contact that manufacturer. Now if you can convince
that manufacturer that you can take his fishing pole and sell it in
markets he’s not covering, he will welcome you with open arms
because your selling it to a noncompetitive market. You're increas-
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 12
ing his business without competing with him. But the criteria, the only
rule you should follow, the only rule, is to never touch a product or
service unless every time it is sold, part of the profit has to come back
to you. As I look back on my 25 years of successful marketing, I
realize that was the only rule I followed. Now I’ve had 20 big winners
in my lifetime, I call a winner any product I sold a million or more of.
Out of those 20 winners, I only created 2 of them. The other 18, I found
from manufacturers in a manner I just described to you. And anyone
can do it. Anyone can do it. Remember, you must have Exclusive
Rights to a product. It’s the foundation to the 10 steps. Exclusive
Rights put you in control. Then your working for yourself. Now lets get
to know our 3 Cossman case studies. First, you should know they had
little or no business experience when they started out. They had no
money and 2 of them didn’t have much formal education. But after
learning Mr. Cossman’s 10 steps, and using his direction, each of our
case studies started doing something they really enjoyed. And each
one has a business now, that’s making them financially indepen-
dent. And once more, it didn’t take them very long to do it. First, let’s
meet Bob Hall. Before he discovered the Cossman Program, Bob
had a dead end job. Very little education and a family to take care
of. He was tired of working hard for someone else, and not making
enough money. He wanted to change his life. Mr. Cossman’s 10
steps turned out to be all the education Bob needed. By following
the 10 steps, he found a plastic wheelbarrow, in a Trade Magazine.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 13
Then he got the Exclusive Rights to market that wheelbarrow for all
of North America, free. Simply by writing to the manufacturer. That
was the beginning.
BOB HALL: I started with a few samples, started
taking them around and as a result, picked up
some orders, started delivering the wheelbar
rows, starting to have the checks come in. And
that was it. The 1st year we sold, in dollars and cents,
a million dollars. In the next 2 to 3 years we developed that, so now
we’re selling 3 1/2 to 4 million dollars a year. Whether its the wheel-
barrow, whether it's a cart, whether its a widgit of any kind, I mean
the whole idea the program is what works, not the product. Sure its
nice to have a product that blends in, but if the steps are followed,
if you cover the program, as its laid out, you know, how to find a
product, how to test the product, how to then take it and set up your
marketing strategy. This program works, you can actually program it
all the way through and say here’s where we are. I would not have
dreamed to be in the house that I’m in, in the location that I’m in,
to drive the kind of car that I’m driving, to have the travel and the
experiences that I’ve had over those last few years. Just on 1 single
product.
DEBBIE YOUNG: I have a new cosmetic invention
out on the market. It's a cream for women that
pluck their eyebrows. It 's a r ich moisturizing
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 14
cream so that when you tweeze your eyebrows you don’t feel all the
pain, or all the discomfort. The 1st step was just to make a black and
white flier, I sent it out to all kinds of experts in the cosmetic trade,
and waited for their response. And, I got a tremendous response, so
I was ready to move onto the next step, which was making the
product, cause I didn’t even have a product at that time. Everybody
was asking for it, asking for samples, and wanting to do stories on it.
I didn’t have any product, I just had the idea. When I knew I had
a winner, I went ahead and developed a product. And now, that
product, Amarine Eyebrow Care, is being sold from coast to coast.
And, although I've only had this product on the market for a little
over 3 months I've already sold a little over $300,000 worth in that
time. Our next Cossman case study, Dr. Murray Davidson, was a
successful foot specialist. One day his son came home from playing
football with such painful heels, that he could hardly walk. Dr.
Davidson tried every product and remedy that he could find. And
nothing worked.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: I developed a product
that we call Tulis. And Tulis shock absorbers for
the heel are just l ittle ribs that collapse on
im pact and they absorb the shock of the heel
walking and hitting the ground. I made a couple of sets of these little
heel cups for my own son, because his heels would hurt when he
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 15
played Pop Warner football. After using the heel cup I created, his
heels didn’t hurt him anymore. But then something else funny hap-
pened, his friends parents started coming to my office, wanting to
buy a pair of these magic little heel cups because their kids had sore
heels. And I recognized at that time that I did have a product, but
I surely really didn’t have any idea what to do with it.
We did reach a point where that little back room in my office was
starting to produce enough dollars that I could drop down and out
of my podiatry practice. As much as I loved to practice podiatry, I
loved this business life more. Today, our foot care business grosses
about a million dollars a year. There's some large drug store chains
that we’re connecting with now, through various reps and
distr ibutors. And, I expect that we’ll at least double the business we
did last year. And, the Foot Locker Chain is accepting us as the heal
cup of choice for their stores. Foot Locker has 1200 stores, so again,
if they help and sell a few dozen heal cups a week, we’re going to
be evolving into some larger numbers.
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: As I look back on my busi-
ness career which was very successful, I realize
that subconsciously I was following 10 steps and
if you follow these 10 steps, you will find yourself
with financial security also. The 1st step is to realize that you want to
go into your own business. Make a commitment. You can start at
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 16
home. Don’t quit your job. Clear off your kitchen table and make a
little space in your home that’s going to be your office to begin with.
And immediately get some business stationery printed, maybe 500
letterheads, they aren’t expensive. Why do I want you to get letter-
heads printed? For 2 reasons, 1st, you can’t communicate with the
people whose names I’m going to give you, and with the magazines
I’m going to give you, on tablet paper. You have to look like you’re
in business. But once you develop a letterhead and start sending it
out, the only thing people know about you is you’re letterhead, they
don’t know your color, your religion, your economic status, if you're
married or divorced. Your letterhead speaks for you. The second
reason I want you to make a commitment is to start, many people
say there going to start today, or next month, but they don’t start.
Make the commitment and you’ll be surprised how quickly things will
flow your way.
BOB HALL: Actually the session one is really laying a foundation. The
foundation of a business is to have stationary, have business cards,
have envelopes and letterhead. So, when you are asking for the
exclusive rights to a product, or you're asking for information from a
manufacturer, you must look like you are in business. You want to
present an image on paper to that manufacturer, so make it look
good. Invest a few more dollars on a good stationery package, as
Joe Cossman lays out in his program.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 17
DEBBIE YOUNG: I made sure I had some business stationary made up,
so that I looked like I was in business, even though I wasn’t in business.
If I had some stationary I could look like a professional.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: The first thing I had to have for business was
cards, stationary, envelopes, and catalog sheets. We developed a
logo with a flying wing over the T in Tulis, and we also had to have
a basic business resale license.
BOB HALL: If you do correspond with a handwritten note, it looks like
you're not in business. The businessman you're communicating with
may have a big operation. My wheelbarrow story is a fine example,
these people have been in business for 35 years. One of the largest
wheel barrel manufacturers in Europe.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: With the step by step process that Joe
defines in the program, you start off by trying to sell into a certain
market and then you identify that there’s more than one market,
that there are a number of markets you can sell a product to. And,
as you sell each market your business grows and eventually your
goals become much higher, as they are today for me.
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: For the second step, you must have something
to sell. There are only 2 things to sell in this country, and that is a
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 18
product or a service, There are only 2 ways to get the product or
service, one way is to create it yourself and the second way is to look
around at manufacturers who are making a product or service in
your field of interest, I emphasis in your field of interest, because if
you get involved in something you don’t enjoy, it’s a hard way to
make money. And, when you do find an interesting product, con-
tact the manufacturer and ask him for the Rights to their product,
in fields they are not covering. I show you 22 ways to sell the same
product and when you enumerate these ways to a manufacturer,
you’ll find out that the average manufacturer only uses 3 of these
ways. He will sell to a wholesaler, who sells to a storekeeper, who sells
to the consumer. Yet, there are 22 different ways to sell that same
product. In fact, I’ve had 20 big winners in my lifetime. I call a winner
any product I sold a million or more of. And out of my 20 winners, I
only created 2 of them, the other 18 I acquired by getting the
exclusive rights. "Would you like to visit Europe without leaving your
home?" "Would you like to go to Hong Kong
without leaving your office?" "Would you like to
go to Taiwan without leaving your easy chair?"
Well, you can make all these trips with overseas
trade magazines. When you take my maketing
program, I show you where to get 25 incredible
magazines printed in other parts of the world, full of products that
are looking for distribution in the United States and Canada. And
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 19
printed in English. Let me just show you a few of these 25. Here is a
magazine cal led Trade Channels, publ ished in Hol land, l ist ing
products from all over the world. Looking for
American and Canadian distribution. Here is a
product cal led Taiwan Yel low Pages. Al l the
la tes t p roduct s made in Ta iwan . Look ing
forAmerican and Canadian distr ibution. An
incredib le overseas publ icat ion Made In
Europe. It comes out monthly and it includes all the latest products
made in Europe, looking for Canadian and American distribution.
Hong Kong Enterprise is another incredible source of new products.
Looking for products made overseas? Use the trade magazines as
your outlet. They are the least expensive and the quickest way to
find an overseas product. And, in many cases, it just takes a letter
on your part, to get the Rights to those products.
BOB HALL: Joe Cossman shows you how to take other people's
products, get the Exclusive Rights, and market that product. The
manufacturer may already have prototypes, they may already
have literature done, they may already have a whole bunch of
research done, and you can capitalize on all that. There’s so many
products out there that manufacturers have that have not seen the
light of day. And I can go to manufacturers now, in fact I do, I go to
some plastics people or, I go to a machine shops and I have to
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 20
almost hold back, because everybody has a product. You know,
how many small manufacturers have products sitting on their shelf
that they're not doing anything with. And all you have to do is
understand how they can go about getting those Rights. And, if you
know how to ask for them and how to present yourself properly, you
can get the rights to incredible products. And there’s not a shortage
of products out there, there's a shortage of good marketing people.
And what Cossman has tried to do is to show you how to market a
product and what to do after you find it.
DEBBIE YOUNG: Joseph Cossman took a product that mailmen used
to deter vicious dogs. He turned that same product around, putting
it in different packaging and calling it Rebuff. He sold it for women
to ward off attackers. I did the same sort of thing. I knew of a product
on the market already and I sort of changed it around. I heard that
instead of going for the expensive treatments, some women took a
teething gel and used it to numb their eyebrow area when they
plucked their eye brows. But, the ingredients in the teething gel
could be really harmful to you and very harmful if you get it in your
eyes. So I found a way to give the same affect as that but to find
ingredients that can’t hurt you. So its really nice product.
I never would have thought there are so many products on the
market that's really just been changed around a little bit, or put in a
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different package. I realize that now because I know how to look for
that sort of thing now. When I approach a store, I know how to look
for that type of thing because of my exposure to the Cossman
program.
BOB HALL: It builds your confidence when you start getting letters
back from manufacturers and some of them you recognize as fairly
large and they’ve taken the time and the trouble and also are
interested in my business. They don’t know I’m working from my
basement or from my garage operation. They’re interested in me
marketing their product. And that really makes you feel good.
Most manufacturing operations can’t go out and hire a bunch of
sales people and marketing people. If you're not able to invent your
own product, then find somebody whose already got one, whether
its a manufacturer , whether its a relative, whether its a friend. And
always get the Exclusive Rights for that product. Start with that, and
then build your little business by selling that product or that service.
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: Okay you have a product or service, the next
thing you want to do is protect it. Now I don’t need to walk into an
attorneys office and leave $5,000 or $10,000 for patents. There are
many inexpensive ways of protecting a product or a service. One
that comes to mind is a copyright. You can get copyright for $30.00.
A copyright is good for your lifetime plus 50 years. Another one that
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comes to mind is a disclosure document. Make out a written descrip-
tion of your product, send it with $20.00 to the Patent Office in
Washington, DC, in about 3 or 4 weeks, you’ll get back a disclosure
document number identifying your product, or your invention.
What does this mean? The government will keep it in their files for 2
years, it is not a patent, but you now have the government on your
side. If someone steals your idea, the government will now testify
that on a certain day you were the first to think of that idea. Another
interesting way to protect something is with a copyright. When you
have something copyrighted in the United States, you can prevent
its importation from a foreign country. Some time ago I came out
with animal heads for children's rooms. I spent about $8,000 with a
sculptor, creating 3 animals heads, a leopard, a tiger and a panther.
After I tested it, and found out it was a good item, I went into
production. I copyrighted my 3 animal heads. Very few people are
aware that you can copyright a 3 dimensional work of art. I put it on
the market. About a month after it was on the market, someone
came into my office and ordered 12 of each head. Then, I heard
through the grapevine, they had sent them over to Hong Kong and
they were making those heads overseas. And then, I heard from my
customers, that the heads were being offered to them at half the
price that I could offer them for. Well, I was desperate. I went to
about 8 attorneys and I said here's a man whose stealing my
product, it’s copyrighted, what can I do? You know what the eight
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attorneys told me ... well what can you do, it’s being made overseas.
Well when I’m in trouble I go to the government, when they're in
trouble they come to you. And I went to the government and I
asked, can I get any help? And they said sure, get a block entry. I
went to the Treasury department and they said, make us onethousand photographs of those animal heads and we will police
the ports of entry into the United States. And, when a hundred
thousand heads came from the competitor into California from
Hong Kong, they were sent back, because I had the copyright. Now
that’s how you protect with little money. It's no trick to protect
something if you have 50 or 100 thousand dollars. I show you how to
protect it if you have limited funds.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: Protecting your product in my particular
case is a very important step, because once I had my product and
it was successful, it would be very easy for somebody to copy my
product and end up in competition with me. Joe Cossman teaches
you how to apply for and get trade marks, how to apply for and get
copyrights and even how to apply for and get your own patent. You
can write a letter to the government with a drawing of your product,
or your idea, or your proposal, and the government puts that on file,
and for a period of time you are protected in that manner, which is
the real inexpensive way to protect your product for the short term.
DEBBIE YOUNG: No matter who I approach, if I approach somebody
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to make the boxes or the formulation, which I subcontract, There’s
a disclosure document right in the course that I can copy from. I
don’t have to get a lawyer or spend any money, I can just copy that
disclosure document and I make anybody who’s involved in Amerine
Eyebrow Care sign it, and then I’m protected.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: I feel the patent, the copyright, and the
trademark session in Mr. Cossman's program are worth the whole
price of the program. For the person who can’t afford to hire a
patent attorney, they can follow Joe’s course, item for item, and
they can get copyrights, trademarks and patents.
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: After you've protected it, through copyrights,
patents or trademarks, you now want to test it. I charge $1000.00 an
hour for consultation and I’m worth it, because I can save people
thousands of dollars and many months of hard work. About 75% of
the people who come see me, and they fly in from all over the
country to Palm Springs, about 75% of those people come because
they did not test. They had an idea and before they tested it, they
made tooling, they made molds, they made inventory. I’m talking
about testing the marketability, whether it’s going to sell. And, to
find the answer to the marketability, you only need one thing, you
need one sample. That’s all. With that one sample, which I call a
prototype, you can show it to buyers, you can offer it to mail order
houses, you can put out publicity releases and you can get feed
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back on whether your making a mistake, or whether you should go
further. I think that testing is one of most important steps in my
program, because if you don’t test properly, you can go through all
your money before you even have your product on the market. I can
tell you horror stories, that people have put a lot of money into
something because they didn’t test, they got hurt. And you know,
one of the ten steps in my program is how to test a product or service
before you put it on the market. Now it's no trick to test something if
you have 50 or l00 thousand dollars to play with, but what if you have
very limited funds and you want to test a product for a few dollars,
before you invest in tooling or molds and inventory. Let me give you
a good example of how I do that, this is the famous ant farm. Ant
farms today are in almost every toy store in the
country, but it wasn’t always like that. The ant
farm first started as an idea in my head. All I
knew was that there was a market fo r an
unusual product like this. The tooling at that time
would have cost us 15 to 20 thousand dollars for this product. What
did I do, I called in an artist, I said we want to come out with a
product called an ant farm. We don’t even know what it looks like.
Would you make some sketches. And, right in my office, that artist
made a sketch of what he saw was an ant farm. We changed it, we
added to it, we detracted from it, and his sketch was so beautiful
that it is still being used as the art work on the ant farm box today.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 26
Now what did we do with this painting, we took it to a commercial
quantity photo house, and we ordered 500 photos of this painting.
We then sent these photos to the 500 largest mail order houses in the
country. We said were coming out with a product called an ant
farm, as described on the enclosed photograph. Tell us where and
when you want to advertise it, and we will see that no other mail
house runs in the same issue of the magazine that you're in. Would
you believe we got back over a 100 thousand dollars in advertising
commitments. We’ll, if we knew $100,000 was going to be spent on
mail order ads, we’d have to sell 50,000 Ant Farms, and only then did
we cut into to steel, and make the investment that was necessary.
Here is a very prime example of how you can put a product on the
market with just a photograph, and not the tooling, and not the
molds, and not 10,000 inventory. So, you if you are ready to put a
product or service on the market, look at that product or service and
see how you can test it inexpensively. Keep in mind, you'll only need
one, you don’t need a 1,000 to get the answer.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: My original test, of course, was with my own
son. It's when I made these prototypes of this product, still to be
named. These heel cups that took care of his problem. In effect, I
tested it on my own son first and it worked. Now that is not a market
test, that was a test of whether the product was worthy mechani-
cally. That still wasn’t enough of a test, the second test happened
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again passively to me, its when his friends parents came to my office
wanting to buy this product for their own children. But more impor-
tantly, it was my first market test. Because the mothers and fathers
that came into my office, were willing to pay any price to get this
product. I followed many of the items that Joe talks about. Of
course, every items specific, and you don’t necessarily go through
all them, but I used most of the check list routinely. This philosophy
never changes. I don’t think it changes for the inventor from his
garage and I know it doesn’t change for IBM. The first thing they do
when they have a new product, and the first thing I do for every new
product, is I make a small number of the product and I go out to the
market with them. The consumer tells you whether to go ahead or
not. If the consumer doesn’t like the product and doesn’t buy the
product, there’s something wrong. And it's time to go back to the
drawing board. You can’t take these steps lightly. The largest com-
panies in the world don’t take these steps lightly. You can’t waste
money and stay in business very long.
BOB HALL: Depending upon the product, you're going to talk to
friends and you're going to talk to neighbors and you're going to talk
to people in stores. I used to take my wheelbarrow to a store and I’d
get the store manager. I'd go to Lawn and Garden people. When
you walk by the cashier you walk into their store with a wheelbarrow,
they haven’t seen before, they would say “who is this nut” you know.
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But at the same time they got the idea of taking your product to
somebody that maybe is knowledgeable either about the market or
about consumer products. You take it around, you find out what
people say you take it to buyers, and you get their opinion. I’ve seen
individuals who have spent thousands and thousands of dollars
developing a product and if they had taken the time and the trouble
to survey it a little bit, They would have found out that it's already
been out there. Maybe in a different form, maybe in a different
package, but its doing the same thing. And they're trying to reinvent
the wheel, and as a result, they end up just wasting their money.
DEBBIE YOUNG: It's one of the most important things, testing. You've
got to know before you put any money into it, or any time. Make sure
it's something that's a saleable item. Don’t fall in love with your own
ideas. Joe teaches you that as well. He teaches you how to go about
it. He tells you what retailers expect out of it, and what your sales reps
expect out of it. And, if the product costs you X number of dollars,
you simply multiply with a ratio. Mr. Cossman gives you and you’ll
come out with your wholesale price and your suggested retail price.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: I had no idea what I could sell heel cups for
to the market place. When I looked at other products relating to the
foot, I was a little frightened because all the other products were low
in price. I found out what I had to anticipate though, and from what
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Joe teaches you in this program, that I wasn’t
going to take the heel cups out in the back of
my car and sell them to people on the street for
X amount of dollars. What you have to decide is
how you're going to sell your product, and in my particular case, it
sells through agents, jobbers, distributors, and an actual retail sales
clerk. And, each of those people have overheads in their businesses
and have to be compensated for their efforts of selling your product.
If you don’t have enough dollar value in your product for these
people, your product will not be handled by these people and it
won’t be sold. So, you have to learn by following the program, how
much money to build into the product, so that it can be sold on a
retail level. If your product falls in the mid line, or the low line of profit
for these individuals, you are going to get pushed to the back of the
deck. You have to offer these people a good fair profit to sell your product.
BOB HALL: Sometimes in your testing, you tell them a higher figure to
get their reaction, not a low figure. You want to go high and then
when you come in lower, the buyers think they have got a winning
situation. Other criteria I look at is whether the product has appeal,
is the packaging right, is there good presentation to the product,
does it have a good chemistry, is it something that people are going
to want. What kind of a segment is going to get it, is it going to get
the higher end people, is it going to need dealerships to sell it?
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 30
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: I now want you to get free publicity on your
product or service. You know very few people are aware if you open
up any magazine in the United States or Canada, about half of the
stories talking about products or services in those magazines half of
those stories are free, the advertiser didn’t pay for it. It is called a
publicity release, so I want you to milk your product for free publicity
before you spend any money on commercial advertising. A lot of
magic happens when you put out a publicity release, I have launched
many products with the money I got back from my publicity release.
There are 2 kinds of magazines in the United States. There's a trade
magazine and there's a consumer magazine. The consumer
magazine is the kind of magazine you find on the magazine
racks , i n s to res . You have to subsc r ibe to t rade magaz ines .
Trade magazines go to the business field. They cover a narrow field,
there are 3,000 trade magazines. There are trade magazines for toys,
for neck ties. I just saw a trade magazine the other day for Christmas
tree ornaments, imagine how specialized that is. When you put out
the release and you are published in a consumer magazine, you
start getting orders from the consumer who sends you the full retail
price for your product, and you ship your product directly to the
consumer. But, when you get inquiries from the trade magazines,
you're getting inquires from wholesalers, store keepers, sales repre-
sentatives and people from other parts of the world, who want to
handle your product on a wholesale basis. So, milk your product
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for free publicity. I probably have one of the most complete business
libraries on the west coast, I estimate I have over 10,000 books on
how to make money, how to get started in business, how to motivate
yourself, self help books, and I can truthfully say that out of those
10,000 books, I only put value on maybe 100 of them. Why? Because
most of these books or courses are written by
people who did not experience themselves what
they are writing in their books. I’m proud to say
that everything in our marketing program is
something that I actually did, I did not do
research at the library, and I didn’t read somebody else's work, it’s
things that I actually did myself. What I’m leading up to is that one
of my subjects is how to get free publicity. And if you will follow my
direction I can show you how to get into dozens of magazines and
newspapers, radio stations and TV shows, by following my direction.
I’d like to tell how one step allowed me to take a $500 investment
and turn it into a quarter of a million dollars, all
in a 6 month period. I learned through a trade
magazine that a gentleman had come out
with this spud gun 10 years ago. What is a spud
gun? It’s a little toy pistol that works with a potato.
You put the tip of the pistol into the potato,
scoop out a little piece, and it shoots it 50 feet, and the potato is
perfectly harmless, because it’s 98% water. Even if you get shot right
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in the face, it won’t even sting! And best of all, you got 300 shots from
one potato. I learned that the man who had this gun still had the
tooling. It was in his cellar and believe it or not, he had 100,000 guns
in inventory. I contacted that man and I bought the tooling from him
for $500. Now anyone can do this, if you keep your eyes alert and
watch what is happening in your field. I learned it through reading
it in a toy magazine. Ok ... I had a gun and I didn’t know what to do
with it. I’m a firm believer in not spending money until I see the end
of the tunnel. So I called the Department of Agriculture and I asked
them what was the situation on potatoes. He said, it's odd that you
asked, usually there's a blight, or a frost. There are 100 potato
producing areas in the United States. This year, every one had a
bumper crop and potatoes are wholesaling for 1/2 cent a pound
and there's a surplus on the market. I xeroxed a letter to the 100
potato producing associations and I said I’m out to popularize the
potato, and I’m going to do it with this gun. We estimated were
going to sell a million guns. We figured an average child will use 5 lbs.
of potatoes before he gets tired of the gun. So, were going to move
5 million lbs. of potatoes, which will help all the potato producing
areas. All we want in return is a sack of 500 lbs. of your best potatoes,
sent to the hotel in New York where the toy show is taking place. Well,
I didn’t get response from them until I left for New York. Then, I get to
New York and there’s 50,000 lbs of potatoes waiting for me. I’m
paying about $300 for 2 sleeping rooms full of potatoes. When
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Railway Express called and said we have a 1,000 lbs. of potatoes for
Cossman, I said he won’t be in for another week. I didn’t know what
to do with these potatoes. But, I learned 2 things in my life ... Number
one, expose yourself, and Number 2, multiply yourself. If you remem-
ber those two little mottos, it will give you a lot of direction. I called
up an orphanage in New York and I asked them if they wanted
50,000 lbs of potatoes. They said yes, we’d like to have them. I said
I’d like to use them for the toy show, after the toy show I’ll give them
to you. Meanwhile can you loan me about 25 of your boys and girls,
I want to dress them up like cowboys and Indians and I’d like them
to meet me in front of the hotel on Saturday at noon. I’ll give each
one a gun and a potato. She said "yes we’ll be glad to do that." At
12 o’clock noon on Saturday, I had a 30 foot trailer loaned to me by
a potato grower with 8,000 lbs of potatoes in that trailer, and we
dumped them on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Prior to that, I had
called radio and TV and newspaper people. We dumped all 8,000
lbs right on the sidewalk, and, I got arrested. I didn’t get arrested for
dumping potatoes on the New York sidewalk, I got arrested because
I violated an old city ordinance. You can’t bring a trailer into
Manhattan on Saturday. So ,they took me down to the police station
and it cost me a 50 dollar fine, and as I’m leaving the station, the
phone rings and it’s one of the major TV stations in New York. Do I
want to appear on their show on the next day, Sunday? And I asked
them, where is their show broadcasted? They said, "we go into 50
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markets across the country from 5 to 5:30." Well even if you have
money, you can’t buy time like that. That’s the best time for children.
So the next day I went over to the TV station with 500 of my best
potatoes, and they gave me 20 minutes to talk about this gun and
"how it’s going to eliminate the potato surplus." The next day was the
first day of the toy show, my room was 20 rooms from the elevator,
you couldn’t get into the other nineteen rooms. People were jammed
into the hallways. I had girls in potato sacks serving coffee to the
people there. When you came into my room you were greeted by
a narrow corridor, which was made by sacks of potatoes. At the end
of the corridor was a Hollywood pin up of a girl. When you came into
the room my girl gave you a gun and a potato, and you took a shot
at the pin up. If you hit her, you got 2 lbs. of potatoes, if you missed
you had to take 4. That show lasted 5 days. We sold 300,000 spud
guns in those 5 days, and after 6 months, we sold 2 million spud guns.
But all of those efforts were done by publicity. In fact at the end of
the campaign, we went through our scrap book to see how much
publicity we got on newspaper, radio, TV and other places. It would
have come to over 100 thousand dollars if I would have had to buy
that advertising. We got it all free. That's the value of knowing how
to use publicity with your product or service.
BOB HALL: I’ve not spent 5 cents on paid advertising in 4 years. And
yet I’ve been in every publication in my industry. I’ve been in all
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the hardware magazines, I’ve been in the Home Center magazines,
you can see some of the awards that I’ve won for being at shows, in
having got publicity on my product. I’ve been on television. I’ve
been on radio, I’ve been in newspapers, in magazines, and the
good part of it is the free publicity goes a
lot further than the advertising. The paid
advertising does not get you the response.
I can show you stacks of responses and
people interested in my product, that re
sponded to a non-paid ad. If I had paid for
all the write-ups and the publicity and everything, it would have
come to over $200,000.00 in just free publicity. This is money I have
straight out saved and that has gotten me exposure. Like I say, I’ve
been on television, in a number of cases where I’ve gone to trade
shows . And you see, the thing is you can’t be afraid to ask for that
free publicity. One trade show the National Hardware Show, the
television camera men were walking down the aisle and they thought
wheelbarrows weren’t too interesting at first. But then when I started
bouncing in it and jumping in it, and they took the television
camera right over to it. It showed up the next 2 days on 7 news casts.
In the Chicago area for exposure I couldn’t have bought, I couldn’t
have paid for that. And there's so many other people at the Hard-
ware Show that were paying for advertising. Here I am on 7 spots
over 2 days, vital days, right at the show and I didn’t pay anything for it.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 36
Joe tells you how he got his publicity. All you have to do is be a little
creative and adapted to your product. He is a master at free
publicity. And if you don’t learn from him, who are you going to learn
from.
DEBBIE YOUNG: I felt confident because they didn’t know who I was,
they didn’t know I was working out of my home or where I was
working from. All they saw was the literature that I sent out, that
looked just as professional as any business could send out. And that's
all they knew about me, they didn’t know if I worked out of a big
warehouse or a small apartment or what. And I had every reason to
be confident they would like the product and they were interested
in the product. Like I said, when my salesmen started approaching
the stores, because I’d sent out all this literature and tried to get all
this free publicity, the stores were already aware that Amerine
eyebrow care was out there. They were just wondering who was
carrying it. My salesmen had the doors open for them when they
walked in. When I first sent out my literature, it was a few hundred
dollars, it was nothing for the black and white literature that I first sent
out. I’ve never had a talent for advertising or putting out an attrac-
tive flier of anything. Joe gives you all those samples. It was very easy
to follow. I couldn’t have made such a beautiful flier if I didn’t have
anything to follow.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 37
DR.MURRAY DAVIDSON: It's the key! As exciting as it is to you, I’ve lived
through the excitement and I’ve done the things that Joe tells you
how to do. In the beginning when a toothpaste company puts out
a new toothpaste, they spend X millions of dollars advertising the
new product on the television, in the magazines, in the newspaper
and they even have people standing on the street corners giving
free samples and they have the free samples in your mailbox. As a
new company and as a product developed by an individual, its
impossible to afford that kind of exposure. The only way a new
product can gain exposure is through the free press release media.
Now free press releases are thoroughly covered in part of Mr.
Cossman’s program. And I can tell you my personal experience. Any
city that I ever traveled in, if I called up the television or the radio
station or the newspaper, and told them that I was in town promoting
a new product that was good for people who had sore feet, sore
back, sore knees, etc., and that I was the doctor who invented it, I
had very few refusals for an interview. The interviews were often held
and played during the news time of the TV show. Its time that you
couldn’t buy for any amount of dollars. Newspapers would some-
times give me 3 or 4 columns, six inches long and a picture of my
product on a news release. Something that the public was inter-
ested in. They really want this material, its public interest, its current
news, new products. But you have to go out and seek it, you have to
ask. I did it exactly as Mr. Cossman said. If you don't know how to do
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 38
something, you do have to follow some example. And, his examples
are very successful. I’d be a fool to vary from that example. Nobody
believes it when I tell them, but I’ve never spent any money on
publicity. It would absolutely bankrupt a new company not to follow
these basic steps. I can assure you that if you’re careful and your
products good and you follow the Cossman program, you have a
good chance at success. But if you don’t follow the course you have
a great chance of failure.
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: You shouldn’t have spent more then a couple
hundred dollars on your product, up to this point. Now I want you to
start marketing that product, I show you 22 different ways to sell the
same product or service. 22 unusual different ways. When I had a
product to put on the market, I would go through the phone book,
yel low pages of the phone book, and I
would look for all the outlets that my prod
uct could fit into. Now one of my products
is Fly Cake. It was an insecticide, it kills flies.
Well, when I sold my Fly Cake, I put on sales
reps for different fields. I call it cross pollinating a territory. I don’t
know who else does this in the United States. I had a sales rep who
just goes to super markets, a sales rep who just sold to hospitals, and
when I talk about a sales rep, I’m not talking about one man. A sales
rep is an organization with many salesmen in it. Super markets,
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hospitals, farms, premiums, I even had
a private label sales rep. What's a private
label sales rep? He’s a man who finds a
competitor who wants to market your
product under his name. Rexall contacted
us, Rexall Drugs and they said can you make a Fly Cake under our
label? And I said sure, we made a different color Fly Cake, we called
it Fly Walk and they became a competitor of ours and they had to
buy all the merchandise from us. They became one of our biggest
accounts. Very few people know about private label. I show you 22
different ways to sell the same product or service. 22 unusual ways
that very few people know about. I bought the tooling for this gun for
$500.00. What is it? It shoots potato pellets and its a children's toy.
Would you believe this lay in a man's cellar
for 10 years because he didn’t know what
to do with it. He put a fortune into the gun.
I bought this tooling for $500.00 and used
my 22 different ways to sell the gun. I sold
this gun to government post exchanges, I sold this gun as a premium
to potato growers, who offered it with every bag of potatoes. I sold
this gun to auto supply stores, I sold this gun to super markets, I sold
this gun to toy stores and I could go on with another 15 or 20 ways I
sold the gun. And you could do the same thing. I can show you 22
ways to sell something, so you can pick up tooling like this for
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nothing, and apply these 22 techniques. And do the same thing I
did. I sold 2,000,000 of these guns, with an investment of $500.00, not
because I was any smarter than anyone else, but because I knew 22
ways to sell. The average manufacturer only sells his product 2 or 3
conventional ways. He sells it to a wholesaler, who in turns sell it to a
store keeper, who sells it to a consumer. That is 90% of how products
are sold. What if you create or develop a product that can be sold
to the mail order market? What should you do? Well, if you came to
me for advice, I would not allow you to run a mail order ad on that
product. It is very difficult to break even and even make money on
a mail order ad today because mail order is very sophisticated.
What do you do if you have a mail order product? Offer it to mail
order houses and let them run the ad on your product, let them put
it in their catalog. There are over 12,000 mail order houses in the
United States and Canada covering every type of interest you could
think of. Let me just show you a few of those 12,000. There is a mail
order house that only specializes in different do it yourself clocks. You
want to make a clock out of a record, out of a piece of stationery,
out of anything else, here is where you buy the parts. HealthWorks,
a mail order house that only specializes in health items. Health
exercise, health clothing, health vitamins. Hold Everything, if you
develop a new type of glue, a new type of hanger, something that
can be used in the home or the office or the factory, give it to this
mail order house and let them run with it. The Pet Catalog. I’ll bet
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everyone in this audience, watching this program, has at one time
or another thought of a product or an idea that can be used by a
dog or a cat or any other type of pet. What do you do if you have
a product like that? Go to the mail order houses who sell pet items.
Now what I just showed you very quickly, multiply by 12,000, and that
is the market to sell your product. Don’t sell it to the consumer
through mail order ads. It is a dream to think you can run an ad in
an expensive magazine today, sit home and open up envelopes
and take out dollar bills. Those days are gone forever. I am the
grandaddy of mail order. I was one of the very first in the whole world
to inaugurate mail order after World War ll. At that point anybody
could sell anything by mail order. Because merchandise was in very
short supply after World War II. And mail order was one way of getting
merchandise. Today mail order is controlled by very large multi-
million dollar firms. They have fringe benefits you don’t have. And
they are happy to break even on an ad in order to add a new name
to their mailing list. So take advantage of this and if you have a
product that can be sold by mail order, offer it to mail order houses.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: I knew I wanted to sell it in more areas then
the medical market, and by reading Joe’s program I was able to
really identify areas to sell into. Now, as a consumer, we’re all aware
of the fact that there are mail order catalogs coming to our home.
And its hard to relate your own product to selling it to that mail order
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media. We all realize that department stores carry products but how
do you get to a department store to have them carry your product?
In my particular case, I wanted to sell my product overseas. Well
how do you sell a product overseas? If you follow Joe’s program, you
can find 22 markets as Joe outlines it to sell your product into. And I
think today we probably sell into most of those 22 markets by
following his advice. We have a whole army of people selling our
products. It’s just the way Joe says in his program, you have to
replicate yourself many, times to sell your products. You have to
make yourself into many thousands of salesmen. And the way we do
this, is the way Joe says to do this in the program. I have a distributor
that covers all the sporting goods industries throughout the United
States. Now I sell product to the distributor. He in turn warehouses the
product, and he has salesmen throughout the United States that call
on the individual stores. So everyday, there's probably, simultaneously,
hundreds of calls being made trying to sell and show my product to
different store keepers in different industries.
DEBBIE YOUNG: I use a number of his ways, as compared to most
businesses which usually have 1 or 2 different ways of marketing. I
use a number, to name some, first of all I have my sales reps out there,
all over the country which is great coverage. I’ve also approached
mail order houses. Cosmetic mail order houses. These people will
send out a few hundred thousand fliers, maybe once every three
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months and I’ve approached them, and they put my product,
Amerine Eyebrow Care in their flyer. And they are in turn soliciting
for me, a few hundred thousand people every few months and it
doesn’t cost me anything. My salesmen work on commission, the
magazines give me free ads for my direct marketing, the mail order
houses put it in their own catalogs and don’t charge me anything for
it. I don’t have to pay for anybody to go out there and sell it for me.
I have files, thick files so big, people are begging to sell my product.
Companies sending me their resumes, its like they're applying for a
job to little old me, it's just great. I didn’t have any trouble finding
people to sell for me.
BOB HALL: Within the first year, following Joe’s steps I was able to set
up a network of agents, sales agents, right across North America. I
had every state, I had every province covered with some kind of
representation. In some areas I had 2 organizations, one hitting a
select market , the whole advantage to that is that all of a sudden I
don’t have to do t myself. I don’t have to make all the sales calls, I
don’t have to make all the telephone calls, I don’t have to make all
the presentations, you have other people working for you.into the
door.
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: With direct mail you use a rifle instead of a
shotgun. You go specifically to a qualified buyer. I don’t care what
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product, or idea, or service you have, I can show you where to get
at least 500,000 qualified buyers for that product, service or idea.
Here’s another example how I made my money. I came out with a
fishing lure, a rather unusual product. It worked with a baking
powder pellet, and the lure swam under water for 1/2 hour or more.
I sold 300,000 of these in the United States at $2.98 each. Then, I was
looking for new worlds to conquer and I heard about a little known
service of the United States Government called Trade Lists. These are
lists of people in other parts of the world who handle products like
yours. So I bought 6 Trade Lists from the government, of people who
buy fishing lures overseas. Using my English circular and nothing
more, I mailed my circular to the names on these lists. Would you
believe in less then 6 months, I sold 200,000 fishing lures. Now could
you do that? If I told you how to contact the government, how to get
these Trade Lists, how to send out your literature, could you do that?
Certainly you could.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: People that are overweight, for instance,
people men at work that weigh 260 lbs., they happen to be on lists
of people that buy heavy clothes, heavy weight clothes. Now that
particular mailing list would be advantageous to a company like
mine, because people that are overweight seem to have more foot
problems, because their weight puts more pressure on their feet.
© 2001 - COSSMAN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING - www.cossman.net - PAGE 45
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: After Direct Mail, I now want you to go into
trade shows. Trade Shows are incredible. When you go to a trade
show, 2 interesting things happen. About 1/3 of the products on
display are being shown for the very first time, because many
manufacturers use trade shows to introduce their products. And a
2nd amazing thing is that a Trade Show is the only time throughout
an entire year when you can speak to the man or woman in that
organization who can make a decision. Usually the rest of the year
they're hidden behind a barricade of secretaries and receptionists.
Here’s that man or woman standing right behind the table and he
can say yes or no if you ask for the rights to his product. If you are
exhibiting in a Trade Show, your most important customers are the
other exhibitors, not the people who come to this show. The other
exhibitors’ because they are in a similar field to yours. But they're
handling a non competitive item. When I worked a Trade Show, I
would leave someone at my booth and I would make it a practice
to spend 2 or 3 hours every day, visiting the other booths and trying
to sell my product to their company. When I came out with Fly Cake,
I was looking for these 22 ways to market this insecticide product.
And, one of the 22 ways I teach you is a Trade Show. Well, once we
got the product established, I was looking for additional ways of
selling it. I heard about a poultry show, a poultry show in Memphis
Tennessee. A national poultry show. What am I doing at a poultry
show? Well I figured anywhere there’s chickens there are flies. Where
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there's flies, they need Fly Cake. So I went to this show in Tennessee
and during the show I noticed 20 men running around the show
wearing bright red jackets and they dominated the show and I
followed one of the men back to his booth. And these are 20
salesmen for a very large company who was selling brooding equip-
ment for the farmer. It was an automated piece of equipment that
carried the eggs from the time they were laid until they were put into
a box. The cheapest one ran $35,000.00 to $40,000.00 a very
expensive item. So I come over to that booth and I asked, "is the
president of the company here?" "Yes, it's that gentleman over in the
corner." I went over to see him. I asked him, "do you know who I am?"
He said" yes, your that fellow down the corner who had those 2 girls
dressed up like big flies." I said yes, and the reason I have them
dressed up like big flies is, I sell Fly Cake. And I want to give you the
thoudsands of dollars worth of business that I wrote during this show."
And he asked me "why are you giving me these orders?" I said, "well,
we don’t have distribution in the agriculture field, the farm field. You
sell a very expensive product, imagine the advantage you have of
taking these $5,000 worth of orders giving them to your 20 salesmen
and let them deliver the Fly Cake . Its a tremendous door opener to
get into the farmers house and talk about the mechanical products
you sell." He said "a great idea, we’ll take it." So I called my office in
Los Angeles, and I said, "immediately put 20 sample kits on a plane,
I need them here tomorrow morning." I rented a room at the hotel
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and invited the 20 salesman from all over the United States, who
were at that one location in Tennessee for the show. I talked about
my product. I gave each one a kit and the next morning, they went
to the four points of the United States and I had national distribution
in 48 hours. That distribution would have taken me 6 months to a year
to accomplish. I did it in one day at a trade show, and anyone can
do it.
BOB HALL: The benefit of going to the trade shows is that you meet
buyers, you meet agents, you meet the press people, you can get
exposure by letting even some of the consumer shows where the
people can come in and touch and feel and handle your product.
It gets you into your industry, you see what the competition is doing,
you see what is happening in the market place, you read about the
trends within your industry and within your market. So, trade shows to
me are a way of really knowing and developing your product. But
more than that, it exposes you to other products. And there isn’t a
show that I don’t go to that I don’t see a half a dozen products, not
being marketed, I mean they're standing there at the show but
they're really not doing a whole lot with it. And they are people that
are approachable, and you can go to them and ask them for an
exclusive right, maybe in the mail order business, maybe in a select
market, maybe for premiums or incentives, fields that I already know
a little bit about.
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DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: Now, you can write to your chamber of
commerce as Mr. Cossman says and you can get a list of all the trade
shows coming up in your area for the next 6 months or a year. Now you
may not want to participate as a booth owner at all these trade shows
but, I did what Mr. Cossman said. I took some product in a brief case
with lots and lots of catalog sheets and I dropped in on a trade show
in San Diego or Los Angeles or Nevada, and walked around the trade
show and looked for people that were selling products that were
either similar to mine or had the outlets that I wanted. And I would stop
at their booth and I would quietly show them my product and also
give a few of my catalog sheets. And more than once, I’ve picked up
some very good distributor outlets from this type of method.
DEBBIE YOUNG: You can utilize a trade show if you're starting out and
you don’t have money. You can go there and meet buyers and get
to know who people are by walking around. And, most of the time
at the trade show, you're talking to the top guy there. It is usually the
president, or the purchaser for the top people that are at the trade
shows. I just presented my idea and told people about it and I got
a really good response. So you know, you don’t have to set up a
booth to get business, you can go and solicit different people and
talk to them, just walk around, passing out things.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: Unbelievable, I mean you go there and you
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talk to the presidents of companies and I mean if you’ve done the
very first stage in the Cossman program properly, you've got good
looking cards, and you present yourself well, and you can give the
impression that you’ve been in business for 15 or 20 years, just based
on the material and the information that Cossman gives you. Be-
cause, if you follow his program, you’ve been in business for 25 years.
Because you’ve had his experience. And so you start talking to other
business people in a way that shows you're knowledgeable. If you
use trade shows well they will boost your product from an unknown
to a known almost overnight. Initially, I went to the medical trade
shows myself, meaning, that I rented a booth space at a medical
trade show, presented my product, and during that show, I gained
sales. Later on, I went to a sporting goods trade show, and at the
sporting goods trade show I also displayed my product at a booth
and I found out that I had lines and lines of people at the smallest
booth in the trade show wanting to find out about my product, and
that brought distributors, because if you have lines around a small
booth that means some of the distributors for other lines of large
products are interested in your product. they want to sell it.
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: After trade shows I want you to lean on govern-
ment services. It annoys me that the average citizen in this country,
does not use the services that he has payed for through his taxes, but
if you go to any large corporation in this country, you’ll find people on
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that payroll who’s only job is to look at these services and how they
can be applied to that corporation. The same services are available
to you as an individual. One very quick example, if you have a
product and you want to introduce it overseas, you can get help from
the Department Of Commerce, and for a very little amount of money.
They’ll ask you what country do you want to hit. O.K., I want to
introduce my product in Japan, or I want to introduce it in France, or
I want to introduce it in Italy. For very little money, they will knock on
doors and they will find you 3 agents who are interested in your
product. Normally this would cost you thousands of dollars, but from
the Department Of Commerce, you can get it for less than $100.00.
The United States Government publishes more books on more
subjects than anybody else in the world. They run the gamut from
infant care, to space travel, to blue jeans, to auto mechanics, to
history, to geography. How do you keep track of this tremendous
outpouring of beautiful books? Get their catalog, of U.S.
Government Books. Over 500 beautiful books, hard cover, soft
cover, ranging in price from .50 to $10.00. they are an encyclopedia
of information that you can delve into and create your own
products from. They also put out wonderful publications on how to
do business in other countries. I'm holding in my hand, “Marketing
in Canada”. It tells you what magazines are in Canada, what trade
shows take place in Canada, what merchandise do they buy from
the United States, what do they sell, what kind of a distribution
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services do they have up there, what discounts do they offer, and so
on and so on. If you want to break in to a foreign country, get in
touch with the United States Government, and find out the publica-
tions they have that will give you this information for those countries.
And what do I hold in my hand? I hold the bible of overseas
marketing put out by the United States government, "Business
America". It comes out every other week, and what is in "Business
America"? Who is visiting United States from foreign countries, what
hotels are they staying at, what are they looking for, what do they
want to buy, what they have to offer, what countries overseas are
looking for products in the United States. What countries overseas
have products they want to bring to the United States. What inven-
tions in other countries are looking for distribution in joint ventures in
the United States. And so on and so on. This is an incredible
publication if you want to know what's happening throughout the
world. Now these three books that I just showed you represent a
small sampling of the tremendous out pouring of publications that
are yours as an American citizen. They are all covered in our
marketing program and in many cases it just takes postage and
stationery on your part to receive many of these publications.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: It's an absolute windfall. Let me give you a
few examples. The United States Department Of Commerce pub-
lishes a journal called "The U.S. Department Of Trade Journal". Which
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is in effect a free advertisement for your product in all the embassies
of the United States around the world. You see, the United States as
you know has a trade deficit at this time. And our government
recognizes this. So, they are trying to get us to export more goods to
foreign countries. So they're willing to help the small businessmen,
such as myself, who really can’t afford to hire a raft of foreign
salesmen to traipse around Europe, Asia, or South America, selling
my product. So, in effect, what happens is, for a small ad, and a few
8 X 10 glossy photographs of your products, and catalog sheets, you
can get a space in "The U.S. Department of Commerce Trade
Journal". Which again is published and sent to all the embassies the
United States around the world. When the embassy gets this trade
j o u r n a l f r o m t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s
t h e y i n t u r n p u b l i s h i t i n t h e
l a n guage of the land that they're in.
A n d , i n t h e f i r s t p u b l i c a t i o n t h a t
we advertised our heel cup product, I
got 415 responses from traders around
the world who wanted to carry my product. Out of the 415 re-
sponses, we got 8 good distributors in foreign countries who sell
thousands and thousands of our products per year now. And each
year the list is growing.
DEBBIE YOUNG: If I want to sell in another country, there's a consulate
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from my country that's out there to help me sell. They set up and help
me find the contacts that I need to find and the doors that I need to
knock on. They’ll point me in the right direction. And its all a free
service. I never thought there was anything like that available. The
average person on the street doesn’t know that. All these big
corporations that are making so much money, they take advantage
of these government services and we pay for it out of our taxes. And,
so why not let a little person like me come along and take advan-
tage of something like that, instead of all the big companies . But,
they are available, and people just have to learn that they're there.
That's what the Cossman program teaches you. I learned how to
find all kinds of free services that would have cost me thousands of
dollars, money that I didn’t have when I first had the idea, That's all
it was, an idea. I approached a research foundation in the country
and I had a chemist work on it because, I’m certainly not a chemist
and then to top it off, I got a government grant which paid that
chemist for the work he did, and I don’t even have to repay that.
That's not a loan, its a Grant. They paid for my idea and the research
on my idea. I never have to pay them back.
DR. MURRAY DAVIDSON: We applied for and received numbers from
the government. Contract numbers for the Army. Contract numbers
for the post office, contract numbers from the V A Hospital. All these
are government run type facilities, that require you to apply for
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contract numbers, and get on their list in computers. And then, you
become part of the system that buys for these large organizations.
Right now, in Dallas, the Army Testing Center, they're testing our
products for installation in the Army's boots and shoes for all of the
people that are in the armed services.
E. JOSEPH COSSMAN: After government services, I now want you to
get into Foreign Trade. Why foreign trade? Because foreign trade as
I teach it only requires postage, stationery, and effort. And, with
today's internet, international manufacturing or marketing is easier
than ever. I’m not interested in your bringing in 10,000 widgets from
another country and putting it in your garage. I want you to act as
a catalyst. I want you to get the rights to a product made in your
country and market to countries all over the world ... or in reverse. I
want you to get products made overseas and market it to outlets in
your country. Only 4 companies out of 100 sell their product overseas.
Why? Because the average company looks on foreign trade as
difficult as selling to the moon. But I speak from experience, its easier
to sell 20,000 of something to a company in Tokyo then it is to sell 500
of the same thing in Chicago. Why? Because number 1, when you
deal in foreign trade you deal in large orders, not little dozen orders.
Number 2, you always get your money in advance in foreign trade,
your customer opens a letter of credit. That money is on deposit in your
city, there's no credit problem. Number 3, if you pursue foreign trade,
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with the help of government assistance, you have tremendous tools
at your disposal. Tools that would normally cost you thousands of
dollars, if you sold domestically.
Dr. Murray Davidson: Most companies are afraid to do foreign trade.
They think it's complicated and involved. They think its very difficult
to do. Foreign trade is no different than sending a product to New
York, or Washington, or Ohio. There are people in this country called
freight forwarders. You take your product, box it up, make an invoice
and get a freight slip ... and, they take care of the customs , the
duties, and the shipping for you. It's just as simple as doing business
in the United States.
Debbie Young: I'm Just starting to get eyebrow care in different
countries. I found out it is a lot easier even than marketing in my own
country. When you're dealing with people from a foreign country,
they don't know you and they don’t know if you work out of an office,
or if you work out of your home. All they know is the letterhead that
you send them. And, to them that's your business. And that's all they
know about you, so I mean you can be working from your home, and
all they see is your letterhead.
Dr. Murray Davidson: The Cossman program offers you a variety of
ways to do foreign trade. Go to your local Department of
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Commerce, they’ll help you with trade lists. Putting ads in various
foreign and international magazines is one way. You can also get
P.R. in these various magazines and periodicals. The most successful
way for me was using the U. S. Department of Commerce Newsletter.
E. Joseph Cossman: These are the 10 steps, How To Start, How To Find
A Product, How To Test it, How To Protect it, How To Get Free Publicity,
22 Ways To Sell it, How To Use Direct Mail, How To Work A Trade Show,
How To Get Free Government Services, and Foreign Trade. If you use
these 10 steps, you can increase your business by a minimum of 10%
, without increasing your overhead. Its not because I’m giving you
any magic potent. Its because I’m giving you techniques you have
never used before, very few businesses know how to use direct mail.
Very few businesses know how to work a trade show. Very few
businesses know how to milk the government for free services. Very
few businesses are selling their product overseas. And if you will take
some of these things I’ve already done, and I explain them to you in
very simple language, and apply them to your own business, I don’t
care if its a service or a product, if you apply it, you can increase your
business by a minimum of 10% without increasing your overhead.
Now I didn’t invent these steps, if you looked at the way Ford sells its
automobiles or General Motors or look at the way anything is sold in
the United States and Canada, they are using some of these 10
steps. I merely brought them down to gut level for the average man
or woman who can read and write English, That's the only
requirement, to take these 10 steps and adapt them to your own
needs.
THE NEXT STEP ...If you’re serious about building a successful business,
please visit our website at:
http://www.cossman.net
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