By Marian Edmunds

Put your hand up if you’d like to earn in just three hours what other people earn in a week? Bret Treasure, a web marketing consultant based in Perth once attended a wealth seminar where he says he felt like he put his hand up 5,000 times over the weekend.

The sales format used is consistent, he says. It’s usually something like: “Here is what I charge for my CDs. Here is what I charge for my seminars. Here is the price for direct access to my advice. Total: $7,750. Today, as a package: $2800.”

And they said things like, “‘who’d like to earn that much money for 10 hours’ work a week?’’ Psychologically, it’s a process of getting you to agree with them hundreds of times, says Treasure. “By the time they get you to the purchase decision and surprise you with the discount, your hand goes up automatically.”

As a marketing person Treasure find the practice of a ‘normal’ price dangerously close to a fabricated price. If they’re not actually selling product at the higher price, it’s misleading advertising but he says he has no evidence that the people presenting at the seminar were doing that.

He also claims to have learned a lot at the seminar. In spite of the sales orientation there was good content and the presentations were mostly impressive, he says. “Apart from the content, I learned how the sales stuff is done; it’s not my style and I don’t think I’d replicate it, but it’s interesting nonetheless.”

Belinda Cohen is a management consultant who runs Inspired Reality offering consulting services and coaching. She attended an intensive marketing boot camp and a bonus internet marketing course set up by Empowernet all of which she believed helped her to increase her earnings inadvertently. “At that stage I was still dabbling in what my Internet presence was going to be and that course taught me was not to rush it,” says Cohen.

The course provided her with a set of useful strategies to leverage her existing network, and diversify her business, she says. Cohen was satisfied with the course, and has continued to draw on it in the year since taking it. However, she was disappointed recently to find a testimonial included in a promotional email with a quote she had not given that inflated her earnings and ran without her permission. Cohen has asked Empowernet to withdraw this.

It may be the fault of an overzealous copywriter or a desperate tactic to acquire clients to something about which many people are wary. The standard response by many providers of personal development or wealth seminars is that they do not allow journalists to write about them. This immediately raises a question in any journalist’s mind. If a product is so good why not talk about it?