Don Lapre was the king of
infomercials. He is no longer visible on TV, but anyone who watched TV around
1996-98 would know Don Lapre. He was visible and impressive. He is
distinctly an effective salesperson and convinced his viewers of the
effectiveness of his products. He was charming, enthusiastic, motivational, and
exaggerated all his products to the extreme. Nevertheless, unfortunately, few
people found any benefit of using his products. Don Lapre allegedly
filed for bankruptcy in 1999 but recovered from it soon afterwards.
Most people who
used his products claimed that they made no money with his techniques. The ones
who do have the visibility figure out that Don Lapre sells products that
don’t contain his secrets to effective selling. The books and courses come out
sounding like one long sales letter meant to market a back-end product by Don
Lapre. He is constantly hard selling but never once tells his audience what
it that adds true punch to his selling success is. Don Lapre even gets
several satisfied customer testimonials on his infomercial but if you look hard,
enough most of those providing the testimonials are just naturally good and
educated salespeople.
Don Lapre’s courses lack
meat but he does have a few good ideas. Unfortunately, even though these ideas
were successful in the 1980s and 90s, they are unlikely to be successful today.
Placing small ads in papers, 900 numbers, government auctions and reminder
services are all over dated and overused techniques. In today’s savvy world, it
is hard to find anyone who will be willing to send money to anyone for a few
line ad in the paper. There is nothing fresh and unique about Don Lapre except
his excessively convincing infomercials.
Don Lapre ran a reminder
service that did not work out. He also entered into multi-level marketing with
Vitamins but none of these ventures seems to gain as much success. The only
person who does get money out of these ventures is Don Lapre himself.
Not that he can be written off as a bad person. Don Lapre pays his
employees well and provides benefits that no one else does. However, it will be
good if he invests some of those funds into satisfying his customers.
