In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* “My advertisement isn’t working. What should I adjust?”
* “Other people who have more resources than me are copying me. How do I stay ahead?” * “I lost $______ and/or reputation in a business venture and I’m disheartened. What can I do to get back up after a big loss?”
Q: “My advertisement isn’t working. What should I adjust?”
A: First, did you run the ad to the right market segment? A lot of times people’s profile selection is too broad. You have to make sure you target as qualitative and on-point as possible. Second, there are high impact factors in the ad itself such as the headline or its’ equivalent. Does your headline denominate the biggest payoff, benefit, advantage, outcome, protection, etc. that the prospect can get? If it doesn’t, test different headlines. After the headline, you can test the
proposition. The proposition is the premise you’re taking. Assuming your headline is good, is your proposition on the mark? Next, you can test proof elements. Depending on laws and restrictions you can either use testimonials or not, and those testimonials could be abstract or concrete depending on what is legal. For example, you could list the kind of results people are reporting. Then you can test different risk reversals.
Q: “Other people who have more resources than me are copying me. How do I stay ahead?” A: People knock off people. That’s the reality of competitive society. If you can’t change it, you have to outthink it and constantly be ahead of it. Build up proprietary and aggregate programs, products and services that have unique advantages, twists and breakthrough technology to them and then partner by going to organizations and individuals and buy them your work, product or service so they can see results. If they do well, then expand the scope, reach and distribution. Q: “I lost $______ and/or reputation in a business venture and I’m disheartened. What can I do to get back up after a big loss?”
A: If you look at any successful company today, the average has to pivot three to seven times. If a business fails there are forces, factors and elements that are drivers of success or deterrents of success. You have to do a self-evaluation and see if you’re harnessing those drivers or you’re being a victim to them. Most failures are a function of decisions you made or didn’t make, actions you took or didn’t take, and forces you harnessed or didn’t harness. You have to evaluate your
thinking given what you know. From this point forward, ensure you make success a natural part of everything you do. Most of the things that fail are because your decisions aren’t astute. If you haven’t read my book The Sticking Point Solution, you can get a copy of it on Abraham.com gratis. It describes the 9 ways business get stuck and how to get unstuck. Overlay the lessons in that book to what you were doing when your business venture failed. Remember: You can always use relational capital to get back in the game as well as figure out what kind of value proposition you can build that is preemptive and preeminent.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* “How can I get started putting together joint ventures and how do I get paid to do it?”
* “I have people changing their minds about using my product/service and/or setting appointment and not showing up. What do I do?”
* “I’m giving something away for free. How do I best position it?”
Q: “How can I get started putting together joint ventures and how do I get paid to do it?”
A: You could go to entrepreneurs who don’t have the resources they need to grow. You create an assessment and isolate all the things they could do if they had money but can’t do because they don’t have money. You can then arrange to find collaborative ventures that would bring them the equivalent of that and you get paid in two ways: A nominal fee for your effort AND a tie-in with the collaborative relationships you engineer based on whatever they are worth.
Q: “I have people changing their minds about using my product/service and/or setting appointment and not showing up. What do I do?”
A: You have to be able to denominate what you’re offering, what it means, prove your claims and do it all in a powerful way. What will they get that is either bigger, better, quicker, easier, etc.? First, denominate that. Offer them to test your claim in which you buy them their first use of your product or service and tell them to compare using your product or service to not using it, and allow them to see which one produces better results. You can also explain the methodology and reason why behind your product or service and it’s results. What is it that makes your product or service better, quicker, easier, etc.? You can them preempt the incredulity by saying, “Most people think it’s impossible, and we did too before we developed this and studied all the research.”
You’ve got to prove all this, challenge them to experience it, and then project for them forward what they can expect after using your product or service. If results take, for example, 4 weeks, you can say, “In week 1 you’re going to experience the following:__________. In week 2, you will start __________. In week 3, you’re going to see __________ By week 4, you will __________. We’re willing to buy you (the first month/the first session/etc.) because this works. There’s only one catch: If you’re really not interested in a proven and powerful method that _____(results they can expect)_____ and only requires you to _____(what they need to do)_____ , then please don’t waste our time or yours.” When you powerfully denominate, prove and position your offering in this way, it can cause people to follow through with their initial commitments.
Q: “I’m giving something away for free. How do I best position it?”
A: Articulate and revere what has gone into making the item you are gifting. Don’t just say “Free”. Say, “We spent __#__ years studying this and we spent __#__ years refining this. We’ve now put it into a form that you can grasp it and act on it instantly. It means a lot to us to share this with you. We would like to gift it to you without charge and buy it for you, but there is an expectation. If we do that, we’d like you to be willing to spend the time to read it and reflect on it and take action. We’re hoping it will help you appreciate it and want to do business with us.” Set a standard of what it is and why you’re doing it. It’s a waste to just say “free”. “Free” has to be animated, valued, and you have to connect it in an almost implicit or explicit agreement of hopeful expectation if upon actuating it produces a result.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “I want to develop a business. Where do I start?”
* “I have a virtual business. How do I build trust and grow my business without being in the clients physical presence?”
* “What strategy can I use to make my advertising yield greater return?” Q: “I want to develop a business. Where do I start?”
A: First, you need to have your product or service. You can’t get partners, promoters, or
performance-based individuals to set up deals with you if you don’t have anything to show them. Second, you need the marketing for the product or service to show people. If you aren’t strong in marketing you can run ads that say, “Marketer wanted to partner with/on ___(What You Have/Who
You Are)___. Equity and deferred fees offered. Call ___-___-____ to discuss project.” You don’t necessarily have to do it all yourself, but these two things are your first priority. Then you have a fork in the road: Do you fund it OR partner with somebody else for equity or interest in the business in exchange for them helping you build it out. This is how you start – and remember: The journey of a thousand steps begins with one step, so you got to break the process down into steps.
Q: “I have a virtual business. How do I build trust and grow my business without being in the clients physical presence?”
A: The easiest way to do this is to identify organizations and influencers who already have enormous reach, trust and credibility with the market you want. Work out with them a joint venture or a strategic relationship where they get a portion of the sale in exchange for being your
advocate to their audience. They can say, “So many of our clients/readers/members/audience tells us they have the following problem: _____________________________________. Our relationship with ___YOUR COMPANY___ allows you to solve this problem at an affordable cost. The quality you will get is __#__ times what you would be paying. It will help you do the following: _____________________.” Start looking at organizations that already have access to the market you want and figure out how to incentivize them. You could give them a continuous share of the revenue, OR a front-end load where depending on what the profit margins are you could give them the initial sales profit, OR whatever compensation or alliance fee works to motivate them. If you do this right, you could have multiple entities, organizations and/or influential individuals you have structured arrangements with. The point here is that rather than doing this cold, it’s so much easier if you find somebody who already has the trust, incentivize them, and give them content or value-adds they can start sending to their audience.
Q: “What strategy can I use to make my advertising yield greater return?”
A: You can create reports, user guides or whitepapers that give people ideas that are really useful from experts AND that establish a buying a criteria. The buying criteria should establish what they should look for, what should be evident, and what they should demand in a provider – and you’re the only one that satisfies it. When you offer these guides in your advertising it will be seen as valuable, establish a greater commitment, and give you more prominence.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to
experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 9th and final question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #9: ARE YOU TRYING TO DO IT ALL YOURSELF?
If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
If you want to grow your business and out-perform your competitors you can’t try and do everything. You must determine where you are the strongest and where that strength is the most valuable for your business. Once you do this, you’ve got to allow other people that have different strengths do the heavy lifting for you. In short, you must tap into “OPR” – “Other People’s Resourcefulness” or “Other People’s
Resources”.
Your job as the owner is to be the strategist, NOT the tactical person doing the heavy lifting. The only way you will flourish and prosper is to get other people who have more skill than you OR other people who are more capable of doing things that take so much of your time. Let them do these things so YOU can focus on high
performance.
In order to do this, you need to be able to creatively collaborate with people inside and outside your business. This could mean experts who work on a percentage, profit-share, or cost-saving, or partners with resources you can leverage.
If you believe you have to do everything yourself, your business won’t last. The “go it alone” mindset is no longer useful in today’s business world. By leveraging other people’s resourcefulness and resources, you can increase your sales, enter emerging markets, add value to your customers, operate more flexibly, lower costs, access knowledge and expertise beyond your own limitations, and expand your business.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing
questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 8th question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #8: IS YOUR MARKETING MEDIOCRE?
If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
Most businesses don’t know how much more powerful they can make their marketing. To have more powerful marketing, you must first monitor and measure how your marketing is performing. How many sales come from it? What kind of sales come from it? How profitable it is? What kind of buyers do you get? Do your buyers repurchase? How many times do they repurchase? How much profit is a buyer worth to you? You need to analyze all this and more.
No matter how you market there are certain factors you need to look at. You must:
* Telegraph the biggest, best, most powerful reason why, outcome, or benefit your product, company or service offers so that prospects will want to read your communication and take action.
* Prove your promise with testimonials, analysis, comparison, and endorsements. * Tell them what benefit they will experience in their lives after they buy.
* Incentivize them via bonuses, price advantage, guarantees, faster delivery, greater support, discounts on additional items, risk reversal, and many other possibilities.
These elements can be added to: Your sales presentations…your ads…on the phone when people call you…on the phone when you call out…on your website…and you have to start using them because they will make your marketing perform better.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 7th question in this series. Be honest:
If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
No matter what business you’re in there are a four forces trying to make you a commodity and make your products or service irrelevant. First is the consumer. They are so well educated that they want to work you against everybody else and make you a commodity. Second is your direct competitor. They don’t want you to be superior, preeminent or advantageous, so they work hard to make you irrelevant. Third are the alternative choices consumers have to your product or service. While not direct competitors, they want to make you a commodity. Lastly is procrastination, equivocation, contemplation and inertia on the part of the prospective buyer. This marginalizes you because they don’t get excited enough, committed enough or take action enough, and it’s a big part of your market.
Instead of giving in to these four forces you must become fiercely proactive, massively preeminent, and position your company, product and service highly above everybody else in quality, performance and/or desirability. You have to become masterful enough in your selling communication to move people who procrastinate to action. The only way you can do this is to be masterful at putting into words what they will gain by taking action, showing them the pain they are tolerating by not having your product or service, and showing them the benefit of having your product or service at work in their lives.
If you think of Aikido, it’s a Japanese martial art that redirects the momentum of an opponent’s attack. What you want to utilize is what I call the “The Aikido School of Marketing” and take the four forces trying to make you a commodity and turn those forces into maximum advantage. To do this, you must take charge. Do not succumb or accept the four forces that want to make you a commodity. Decide not to be marginalized. Make your business preeminent. Deal with clients and customers in a better way. Gain greater advantage. Communicate more powerfully, effectively and compellingly. Get your company and people caring more, being more, and doing more. Show that your product is a superior choice than doing nothing or choosing alternative products. All this and more has to become a conscious shift in how you do business.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 6th question in this series. Be honest:
If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
Most businesses waste much of their effort on activities or actions that don’t work. They don’t question them, they don’t analyze them and they don’t experiment or test different approaches, markets or marketing. As a result, they lose money, don’t make the money they deserve, and forgo double, triple, even quadruple the result they could be getting from the same result, time, effort and money.
To overcome this, you must test different and better approaches. Ask yourself, “HOW COULD I: Target more qualified prospects…create better presentations…improve my guarantee and risk reversal…use more effective messaging…craft more compelling copy…test more effective sales approaches…run more profitable advertising…demonstrate a more powerful proposition or positioning…get buyers to buy repeatedly…ethically program buyers in the beginning of the relationship to buy…put in place additional products to sell…build referral systems…?” Recognize this: In an ultra-competitive market, you only have your ability to better think, act, transact, communicate and be more powerful. Working harder doing the same thing that doesn’t work is NOT going to get you anywhere except exhausted. Commit to finding breakthroughs. Unless you experiment, test and evaluate, you can’t do this. So commit to finding better
approaches than the ones you are using now and you will produce more profit and move forward faster and more predictably.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 5th question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #5: ARE COSTS EATING UP ALL YOUR PROFITS? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
Costs eating up your profits could be due to many factors: Cost of fulfillment; Underutilizing your peoples’ capabilities; Office and equipment costs; Non-optimal business processes; Not selling to the optimal amount; Margins; Not using opportunities to the maximum amount; and many more possible factors. However, there are ways you can fix these problems.
First, if you are underperforming in sales, marketing, productivity or talent performance, you can go to experts. Instead of paying them fees, you can offer them rewards that are based on the results they produce. If someone can get you extra volume every month or get your people being twice as productive., you can give them a percentage of that increase.
Second, you could share services to lower costs. Other companies that are not directly
competitive with you could share services with you such as warehousing, billing, bookkeeping, buying power and so on.
Third, you could buy weaker competitors. Instead of paying cash, you pay them out of the accounts they have that you take over. Using this strategy, they eliminate their overhead, you service their accounts, they get paid a percentage of the profit and you gain greater utilization. Fourth, if your product doesn’t give you enough margin then you can find other products people buy before, during or after yours and package them together. You can do this even if they aren’t your product, because if you can get even half the products on an item along with your normal sale then you just increased your total profit on that sale by a large amount.
Fifth, you can add complimentary products and services that people buy. Ask yourself, “What else do my customers buy besides what I sell?” Make partnerships to offer these products and
services to your customers because they already trust you.
Sixth, look at your business capacity. Most businesses perform under capacity in terms of their staff, facility, production and so on. You may be able to handle double or triple the sales with not much more expense other than your cost of goods. If that’s the case then selling a lot more, whether it’s volume or larger size purchases, could be very profitable to you. You might want to look at markets where you sell larger quantities at low prices because it takes your sales above and beyond the level you’re at now. Even though you don’t make as much profit per item, you’ll still be making more profit. If you do this in alignment with your normal activities, it’s another way to overcome cost issues.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
QUESTION #4: IS YOUR BUSINESS TACTICAL INSTEAD OF STRATEGIC? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
Most businesses are tactical, not strategic. Having a plan doesn’t mean you’re strategic. Being strategic means figuring out the most powerful system for continually driving a constant flow of prospects and buyers to you. It means that same system keeps buyers coming back to you and buying repeatedly from you. It means you avoid taking ineffective actions that are a waste. It means not doing anything that doesn’t advance or enhance your master strategy. If you want to win in the competitive world, you must be super strategic.
Strategy is your long-term master plan. Everything you do to generate revenue, sales, marketing, advertising, promotion and more is designed to support this master strategy. Most people throw a bunch of random ads or marketing up without testing them, improving them, or making them consistent with any overriding master game plan. Once you establish your long-term game plan, never do anything that deviates or diverts you from advancing, enhancing and supporting it.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to
experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 3rd question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #3: DO YOU HAVE ERRATIC BUSINESS VOLUME?
If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
If you’re experiencing erratic sales volume it could be because you have erratic marketing. If you don’t do things with regularity, you can’t expect a consistent flow of prospects and buyers. From the moment you start a discussion with a prospect, you have to know how long it takes them to buy. Based on that (and the costs to run the business) you then have to determine how many prospects you have to generate so you get a certain number of buyers within a certain period of time and how many of those buyers will keep coming back. If you don’t have systems designed to generate, advance, and convert prospects to buyers, buyers to repeat buyers and systems that
get customers to re-active once they stop buying, then you can’t expect anything except erratic sales volume.
Depending on the product or service you sell you may want to create or acquire a less expensive starter product or service to get people started in a buying
relationship. If you sell only a few products or services, you may want to partner with other people who have products and services that are logical extensions of what you sell so you can add value, volume and consistency to your business. If you have selling cycles or seasons, you could acquire other products or services and sell them to buyers who would normally buy them during these times.
You also want to be strategically quantifying your efforts. Some marketing pulls better than other marketing; some media pulls better than other media; some products sell better than other products; certain salespeople may be better than other salespeople; and so on. Unless you analyze these things, you won’t know where to make the best investments. Everything you do should be a strategic investment with optimal long-term financial and strategic business returns in mind. Analyze the data; it speaks. It will tell you what is most profitable and where to put your money so you experience more consistent business volume.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 2nd question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #2: IS YOUR BUSINESS NOT SELLING ENOUGH? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
If you’re not selling enough it may the method of selling. Most people are trained in product features and elements – not consultative advisory selling. Yet, consultative advisory selling helps you and your team members guide the prospect toward a trusted relationship with you and helps the prospect feel comfortable making a decision to buy from you. Get trained in consultative selling.
If you’re not selling enough you may not have a systematic process in place to keep generating new prospects. You must put in place strategic methods to target the best, most desirable profile of potential buyers and reach them continuously and regularly so they start a relationship with you. This may mean calling you, inviting your salespeople out, visiting your website, and so on. You don’t want to be doing things erratically or occasionally. You need to, again, put in place regular marketing, systems, and activities that reach the highest probable profile of target prospects you want to reach. Without this in place, you won’t put quality people into your sales funnel or system that will close. Take proactive control of your selling process.
If you’re not selling enough you probably don’t have enough pillars in your Power Parthenon. You must find multiple ways to reach your target audience. It’s not just about using social media, or advertising, or word of mouth – you have to slowly and conservatively test multiple ways you can market at the same time to your market. The combination will cause people to take action and will reach people you wouldn’t normally reach. Another part of this is utilizing referral generating systems and having happy satisfied clients continuously and enthusiastically referring more people to you every month.
Lastly, If you’re not selling enough you have to put together strategic alliances, partnerships and finding new forms of distribution. Ask yourself, “What do my customers buy and who do they buy from before, during and after they buy from me?” Start making partnerships with those kinds of companies. This is how you can reach your market from multiple ways at the same time and gain dominate competitive advantage.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let’s start with the 1st question. Be honest:
QUESTION #1: IS YOUR BUSINESS LOSING OUT TO COMPETITORS? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
When you have a superior value propositions, a competitive advantage, and a preeminent position in the minds of your customers, you become seen as the only trusted company for them to deal with.
The very concept of advantage means you’re offering something more appealing, more beneficial, and/or more advantageous than competitors. You may offer better service, a better guarantee, quicker delivery, more bonuses – but in all causes it is beyond what everyone else is offering. If you don’t offer something beyond what other companies are offering, you can’t have advantage. Learn to become preeminent. This means your relationship with your clients, prospects and/or buyers is a closer and more caring one than your competitors. You have to be there for them in ways your competitors are not. If you care more, do more, respond more, offer more – you gain advantage.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* “Can you give me an example of a post-purchase referral system I can use?”
* “I’m an employee and entrepreneurial. I want to create more revenue for my employer and get paid for my effort. How do I do it?”
* “I want to start getting paid on performance. How do I do it?”
Q: “Can you give me an example of a post-purchase referral system I can use?”
A: After you get clients and they start repeatedly purchasing from you, you can write them and say, “Our business is predicated on finding wonderful people who appreciate the benefits our product/service delivers. We depend on, and appreciate, referrals. If you’ve benefited from our product/service, we encourage you to tell as many people as you can. When you do, we wish to honor, acknowledge and reward you in appreciation by gifting you the following:
____________________.” You can then decide what gift to send them that encourages them to refer people to you and shows appreciation.
Q: “I’m an employee and entrepreneurial. I want to create more revenue for my employer and get paid for my effort. How do I do it?”
A: Go to your employer and say, “I want to create a division for us that is going to augment, not supplant, any business we do. I will build this division and work on it. I can work on it in my own time or take a portion of my current work time to work on it. When I build and develop it I will want one of three things: I either want a long-term participation in the revenue – OR – I want a lump sum based on what it’s worth at a certain point – OR – I want a buy-out of it, or if it’s not big enough I want the right to buy it out from you. If you don’t want to do this, that’s okay, but it seems
ludicrous not to do it because the worst case scenario is we try it and it doesn’t work. The best case is that I can build us a $________ profit center that is totally additive and augments what we do.”
Q: “I want to start getting paid on performance. How do I do it?”
A: Don’t make it complex. Identify one or two no-brainer areas where you can start creating a measurable impact. Whether you measure response, conversion, dollars – whatever metric is easiest, use that. You can then go to people and say, “There are __#__ impact points in your business that can multiply your results. I would like to start with you on the two most immediate, impactful, and profitable ones. I will do it on a performance basis as long as I get ____% of the increased performance above and beyond a base metric we will agree on together.” After this you can add more, but don’t try and do too much at first. Find one or two no-brainers you can knock out of the park and you will win every time. Even if it’s not initially that lucrative, you can build on it once you have get results.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* “What is the fastest way to get started with joint ventures?”
* “I’ve been going through a hard time (e.g. bankruptcy). What can I do to succeed?”
* “I want to sell my business, but my partner who had expertise in the business left and now sales are down. What do I do?”
Q: “What is the fastest way to get started with joint ventures?”
A: Look at businesses that have a lot of prospects they don’t convert, and/or buyers they have nothing else to sell to, and/or buyers that could be more perpetuated on recurring purchases. Ask yourself, “How can I help them convert more, sell more and/or perpetuate recurring purchases?” See how you can help them do more with what they do. You could also try to see what
complimentary products and/or services could logically be purchased before, during, after and/or in association with what they sell and set up deals that way. You can also look for arbitrage where you connect gaps that aren’t being connected. For example: Someone may have a book on a subject without anything else. They don’t have an advanced course, or consulting, or a seminar, or a group program. You could find someone that has that and put the two together and take a piece of both sides, or you create the concept for them and have them give you a percentage. Q: “I’ve been going through a hard time (e.g. bankruptcy). What can I do to succeed?”
A: I have a concept called the Aikido School of Marketing. Aikido is a martial arts category where you use the power of the enemy to your advantage. The key here is you have to use your
negatives positively. Go to people who are somewhat iconic and start making relationships with them. Articulate a meaningful, concrete, well-documented, thoughtful vision that could be presented by the iconic individual to the people you want to reach. This individual is your bridge advocate and could make an introduction for you. However, again, the vision can’t be an abstract concept. It needs to articulate how it would work, why it will be powerful, how it can be
conservatively tested, what can be done to adjust it, and it needs to show all the research you have done.
Q: “I want to sell my business, but my partner who had expertise in the business left and now sales are down. What do I do?”
A: If the business is dying, you need to stabilize it and turn it around. Run ads in the appropriate media to find the right person who is knowledgeable. The ad could say, “Partner Wanted: No investment required. Business established. Clients and revenue underperforming its’ potential. Investor wants dynamic and ambitious partner who can build the asset to be valuable enough to create wealth for both parties.” You go to media that would have this person and try to get somebody. Tell them that their only investment is going to be funding themselves. You can tell them that whatever investment you’ve put into the business, they get to leverage that investment for only the cost of underwriting themselves. You get people that want to do it and give them the right to build it. You could give them equity based on performance and/or phantom equity that is conditional and provisional based on performance. Next, look at non-competitive, complimentary companies that already have access to the market and go to them and say, “I’ve already invested $_________. I’ve got _______, _______, and _______ , but the lead person has left. I’ll make a killer deal with you: You can have this as the backend. We will split profits. You provide your team to run it, and when it gets to a certain point we can sell it to the outside market OR you can buy it from me at a pre-agreed upon under-market valuation.” Now, having said all this, depending on how much you’ve invested, the infrastructure you have, and your current cash flow, you may look at the reality of the situation and be better off closing the business down – OR – you could take the clients you have and sell them to somebody else for a piece of the revenue and then close down the business but keep the name and make it a division of somebody else’s business. Some people are so focused on taking their losing investment or disappointment with people they have backed and try to get it back and turn it forward. However, in our lives, all we have is our time, effort, opportunity cost, resources, capital, and so on. To spend too much time on something that is going to be very difficult to get above even, let alone get to high value, may not be the highest and best use of your time. If you can sell it on an earn-out and move it to somebody else or give
them the chance to keep it (even if you have them free rent for a while) and start monetizing it better, you could take that money and invest it into something you have skill, knowledge and expertise in.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “How do I better manage my time?”
* “I’m providing something that is similar to a lot of other people. How do I stand out?” * “I’m lacking confidence and/or people skills. What can I do?”
Q: “How do I better manage my time?”
A: This goes back to highest and best use theory. You look for where the highest and best use of opportunity is for the highest probability monetization. You bring on partners and employees, depending on who is most appropriate for the situation, and YOU only operate in the realm where you are the most powerful. For example: If there are 12 things you could do, but three of them are going to have 10 times the probability and 18 times the profitability, that is where you personally concentrate your time. You can utilize staff to source and verify opportunities before you involve yourself or talk to prospective clients. You have to know what is the most valuable and what is the least valuable, and you only work on the area of activity that is the most valuable.
Q: “I’m providing something that is similar to a lot of other people. How do I stand out?” A: When the statistical odds aren’t in your favor, do something where you have control. Why would you want to compete? If you have 500 competitors, why would you want to be 501? Sometimes we put ourselves in a position that doesn’t make sense. Do something where you get control. For example, if you could take those same 500 competitors and put them under you and get override on all of them, that would elevate you beyond being a provider and put you in the position of being a controller of the deal. If you can’t control a deal, don’t worry about it; it’s not the only deal that exists. Only do deals where you get the toll position. Like a toll road where you have to pay to use it, you want to be a position where YOU control the deal and get an override on, in our example, 500 people. This way you are no longer the 501st person in a low viability deal. Find someone who has something great, get control and then have all the competitors promote it. If they don’t want to do it? Don’t do it! Never do anything in your life where you are nothing more than a commodity. There is no advantage to that. Only do things where you have control of your destiny.
A: Watch, listen to, re-watch and re-listen to everything on preeminence. It will liberate you. Remember: It’s not about you; it’s about them. When you stop worrying about how you
communicate, you will be more powerful. In Greek mythology, there was a famous orator who was trying to rally the townspeople to go to war. There was a big meeting in the town square, and the famous orator disseminated the most eloquent, wondrous speech he had ever given. It
mesmerized, bedazzled, and impressed everyone who heard it. “What a great speaker,” everyone said. Then, a little uneducated farmer spoke. He loved his heritage, his freedom, and his
countryside but he was intimidated, awkward and couldn’t even make eye contact with the people. However, he talked about his heritage, his family and freedom. He talked about how important it was for his children and for everyone there, and how tragic it would be for them to let that
disappear. The speech was awkward – but sincere. It was not eloquent – it was emotional. When he was done speaking, the towns people exclaimed, “Let’s March!” Give yourself permission not to overthink what you are doing. The concept is always more important than the copy. If you convey the right purpose and positioning, it will be strong. You can transform people’s lives and make money with what you do and how you do it. You have the privilege, opportunity and obligation to make a difference in people’s lives. When you’re not worried about you, you will be much more fluid.
Here’s the truth: Anyone can become a marketing genius. Right now, you really DO have the power to elevate, accelerate and multiply your business results…
IF:
You’re willing to replace old and outdated models…
You’re willing to throw out attitudinal limitations and fears… You’re willing to welcome possibility and boundless potential…
Once you release the constraints of the status quo, you will find everything you do become increasingly effective, almost effortless and wildly profitable.
That stated, let me give you a short course primer on the three elements that make up YOUR marketing genius:
First, AOS (“The Abraham Optimization System”) gives you maximum profits with minimal time. Most entrepreneurs unknowingly limit, constrict and constrain the number of prospects they could be converting, the number of buyers they could be selling, the number of repeat buyers they could be generating, the size of the transactions they could be doing, and more. Yet, as part of your marketing genius mindset, optimization reveals all the hidden ways that revenue, sale and impact could be slipping through your business fingers. Optimization is about getting the highest and best use of ALL your time, effort, opportunity, access, people, relationships, capital –
EVERYTHING.
Even though the odds are high you are NOT getting the maximum performance, results, impact, sales and profits you could from everything your company, partners, distributors, vendors, associated and more are doing – know this: Once you gain a broad, comprehensive, expanded sense of how many better, safer, faster, higher yielding, less risky, more recurring options, opportunities, approaches and possibilities there are available to you to replace underperforming ones OR add to multiply what you’re doing now… your business transforms. That’s what AOS can do as part of your marketing genius mindset.
#2 – APS:
AOS only works optimally when you add the next element to it: APS (“The Abraham Preeminence System”). This is a strategic philosophy that is the lifeblood and foundation of superior performing businesses. It’s the culture you instill in your people. It’s the elevated way you communicate. It’s the formation of your advertising, marketing, and sales communications. It’s what you stand for. APS positions you and your business in the mind of the prospect as THE authority in your field – the only viable choice the prospect can make. APS takes you from being a generic provider of a service or product, to your clients most trusted advisor…the most elevated source…someone who always has their best interest at heart.
If you truly incorporate APS into your business and marketing genius mindset, it allows you to charge more for your products and services without having to increase your costs, shorten your sales cycle while multiplying your trust factor, and create more value from every interaction and transaction. Imagine: Champion and advocate clients that love you and appreciate you so much that they each refer clients to you every single month. That’s what APS can do as part of your marketing genius mindset.
As powerful as AOS and APS are, there’s one more element you must add to ensure cohesive, integrated growth: ARCS (“The Abraham Relational Capital System”). This is about creating a profit arc that supports and elevates your business expansion and stability by orders of magnitude. This means multiplying money through relationships. You can tie into millions, hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars worth of other people’s past, current and future expenditures, good will and credibility. It starts with a focus on OPR – “other people’s resources”. There are over 100 categories of OPR impact points that most people never even see, let alone harness and harvest.
Through ARCS, your clients and customers become your best salespeople. You elevate and create newfound levels of credibility for you and your business. You connect with respected and prestigious individuals and create strategic alliances, advisory boards, and more with them where they have no liability yet lend their credibility, reputation and stature to you. You achieve
extraordinary marketplace differentiation, preeminence, and pre-emptiveness. That’s what ARCS can do as part of your marketing genius mindset.
When you implement all three elements of the marketing genius mindset – AOS, APS, and ARCS – you not only unlock and unleash passion, possibility, profit and purpose, but you also magnify the impact you’re able to have throughout your industry, community and life.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* “My product/service could be helpful to a lot of people’s audiences/customers. How do I approach them?”
* “What should I read if I want to learn how to create compelling sales copy and advertisements?”
* “I want to change the paradigm of my industry/market, get people thinking differently and also position myself in my industry/market. How can I do it?” Q: “My product/service could be helpful to a lot of people’s audiences/customers. How do I approach them?”
A: Identify a list of the most favorable list owners, bloggers, organizations, communities,
publications online, publications offline and iconic people in your industry. Once you do this, you can offer your product/service as a non-competitive, ancillary product/service value-add that doesn’t diffuse anything that company, list owner, website or community offers, and rather
reinforces what they do and simply pay for results. Contact each of the partners and say, “I have line of products/services that __________. It’s designed to support the people you serve by __________. I would like to propose a collaborative marketing partnership where I provide marketing to you that you can use, and we sell the product/service on your site together at a price point of $_____, and we split the revenue ___% / ___%.” If you hit a receptive person, you have to have your marketing in place to show them. It must be compelling and you need good copy, but you can create this. If you do this, you have a possibility of building a great distribution network and you can then sell more products and services. Also, once you sell one of the
products/services, when you ship it out or deliver it, you have an opportunity to offer more products/services and packaged offers where people can buy greater quantity or frequency. Q: “What should I read if I want to learn how to create compelling sales copy and advertisements?”
A: There are many, but here are just a few recommendations: 1. My Life In Advertising/Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins 2. Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
3. Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy 4. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
5. Successful Direct Marketing Methods by Bob Stone 6. How To Write A Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab 7. The Robert Collier Letter Book by Robert Collier 8. Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
9. The Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters Of All Time by Dick Hodgson 10. 2,239 Tested Secrets For Direct Marketing Success by Denny Hatch 11. Million Dollar Mailings by Denny Hatch
Q: “I want to change the paradigm of my industry/market, get people thinking differently and also position myself in my industry/market. How can I do it?”
A: First, create a book. The book could deal with why almost everyone in your industry/market is out of control and doesn’t even know it – and you describe how to get masterful control and sustaining improvement forever. You tell your story, talk about your contributions and your
hardships and dysfunction in the industry/market that you see. The book can be your contribution to the industry/market to help the company’s in it understand where they could be stuck and methods they can utilize to gain more productivity, profitability, or whatever the measure of success is in your industry/market. Help them identify the problems they don’t see, the causes of the problems and the best prescriptive treatments. Describe the generators of dysfunction that no company in the field would want to be contributing to, but are — then give them rapid, sustainable phases for extracting themselves from that state. To make the process even easier, you don’t even have to write the book: Sit down with someone you’re comfortable with, break the book into sections and titles, outline it, and then just talk it through and record it. Send that recording to a transcriber, and once you get your rough transcriptions back, go to a local journalist student and ask them to edit it. Now you have a first draft you can start sending out to people – and you’re on your way!
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* “How do I make it easier to keep building and deepening the relationships I have?”
* “What is the best way I can approach companies, partner with them, and help them grow their business using my expertise?”
* “How can I build an initial relationship with international markets?”
Q: “How do I make it easier to keep building and deepening the relationships I have?”
A: You build a system so that once you initiate contact, it sustains the relationship and takes it to the next logical outcome. If you’re going to go out and meet 100 people and you want to have top of mind awareness that is building momentum, credibility and a bond, you have to ask yourself this: “What elements of value-based communication, content, gifting, information, introductions, books and so on can I do that will keep working hard for the outcome I’m after and will elevate and distinguish me and my business into a strata of awareness and appreciation that is beyond the crowd?” You don’t have to figure out what you’re going to send them, how you’re going to communicate every month/week, or anything of the sort. Put the system in place. How? Decide what frequency and format your system will have. Is it going to be a link to somebody else’s article? Is it going to be a book? Is it going to be a recording of something? Are you going to find the rights to something somewhere else and give it to your people? Whatever it is for you, have it ready so you don’t have pressure placed upon you after you initiate the relationship – instead, you have the system working for you.
Q: “What is the best way I can approach companies, partner with them, and help them grow their business using my expertise?”
A: First, identify the entities that are the most appropriate profile or most qualified to work with you whether you know them or not. Second, you can allocate some capital every week and send out a number of letter (in accord with your schedule to follow up) along with something valuable they can utilize – a book, a newsletter, an article, or something else – and the letter might say something like this: “If history is any indicator, you’re a ___________. I see some wonderful opportunities in your future – but with those opportunities come some issues that need to be resolved: _____________. This is where I can be helpful. Rather than waiting for business to happen or for money to change hands, I’m going to invest first in you. I think this
newsletter/book/article might be helpful. My goal here is very clear; I want a relationship. I want to invest in you now so when and if you ever need me, you’re comfortable that I will serve you and your company well.” In the letter tell them why you are sending what you are sending them, tell them what to do with it, tell them what it can mean to them – give them context, guidance, perspective and intended outcome. Third, after you send this letter, you follow up and you start a sequence. Remember: You’re much better off only sending 10 of these letters and being able to have a continuity and a complete cycle than you are sending 1,000 of these letters and just playing the law of averages. This is about quality of connection versus distribution.
Q: “How can I build an initial relationship with international markets?”
A: Don’t try to do it yourself. Find partners that already have the market, the buyers, the
subscribers, the email list, the platform, the distribution and so on. Have a third party researcher or service spend time coming up with every category of business who would be a good partner for you, and then start looking at their website, stature, best-selling books, and so on. Then try to make contacts before you ever travel there.
There are only three ways to grow any business. 1. Find and convert more prospects to buyers.
2. When you convert prospects to buyers, get them to buy larger units of purchase each time they buy.
3. Get buyers to keep coming back more often to buy more – and if you don’t have a lot of other products to sell, you figure out other complimentary products or services you can acquire, private label, joint venture or get rights to so you have ongoing revenue.
The goal of a business is not to keep finding new buyers all the time that never buy again…it’s to keep finding buyers that come in, start buying, and buy again and again. You then have a base that you keep building so you create predictable future revenue that you have certainty will keep coming in.
When your business has predictable ongoing revenue, you have financial solidarity or security AND your business have value to others. Not only will you be creating a significant predictable, recurring, sustainable income, but you’ll also be creating a wealth asset you could sell to somebody in the future because it has predictable future revenue.
Your advantage in business comes from gaining higher and better outcomes, performance and results from your time, effort, access and on. To drive up your performance to this level means understanding a critical principle…
…STRATEGY.
Most people are tactical and do things for the moment. Being strategic would mean having a master game plan fueling and directing everything you do. When you start with the end in mind and every action, activity or decision your put time, money or effort into is designed to advance and enhance your outcome, you’re being strategic.
Let me give you an example: If your model was to do the easiest offering to your market that will get them to start a relationship with you because you knew the sooner they start a relationship the sooner you will get subsequent sales, then it would be strategic to make it easy to have a
relationship with you. Your strategy in this case could be to go into various markets with different marketing and make offers that are irresistibly easy to accept so you can build a relationship and move people to the sale and resale. This would give you a great advantage over people who are just trying to sell.
If your model is to get people started easily, move to them to the first sale, add more products to the first sale, add a re-consumptive product that the client would buy again and again, add ongoing structure that helps the buyer keep buying over and over, add more products or services so the client buys more things over longer periods and it makes you more profit…now you’re thinking at a heightened level of strategic discipline over your competition.
The reality is, most people don’t have a well thought out strategy. They just try and sell
something. However, when you think strategically it makes a huge difference to your results and outcomes.
When your business model is propelled by a great strategy and everything you do is congruent and consistent with your strategy, everything you do produces a greater initial and ongoing effect; so ensure everything you do advances, enhances and multiplies the long-term business game you’re playing.
Strategic thinking puts you far above how everyone else is thinking – and a properly deployed strategy can yield exponential results.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* “I want to make a deal between companies that have a product and bigger brands/companies that have customers that could buy the product. How do I do it?”
* “Which direction should I go: Mass Market or Higher-End Market?” * “How do I position me and/or my company as high end?”
Q: “I want to make a deal between a company that has a product and a bigger brand that has customers that could buy the product. How do I do it?”
A: Go to the big companies and get signed documentation that states that if you can produce, provide or represent to them a certain product, they will be open to buying it or distributing it. What you want is a Contingent Agreement. A contingent agreement states that “If you do X, I will do Z.” So, for example: “If you can get the rights to XYZ product, we will buy it exclusively from you.” You want to tie up the commitments from the big company first. Once you have five or ten commitments, you go to the companies with the products and show them you have commitments and give them two weeks to respond. You’ve already got the trust and commitment of the bigger company if you can deliver, so if the company with the product wants to do the deal with you they can – or – you can find a competitor. In this way, you’ve already got the arrangement locked up, and if the product company wants to work with you and make it worthwhile exclusively, you’ve now got buyers and distributors. If they don’t want to work with you, you have a list of alternatives. They key is this: Tie up the deals and relationships exclusively before you go to the product companies. Don’t do anything until you get those agreements. If you don’t get the products, it’s okay, but first get the bigger companies and send the distinctions about the bigger companies to the product companies so they can see what you got.
Q: “Which direction should I go: Mass Market or Higher-End Market?”
A: If you are a quality provider that will not let your market down, go for the higher-end first. Once you build that, you can go to the mass market and say, “We serve the highest end people. However, there are a lot of smaller clients that need this. So, we’ve decided to make our
products/services available to you. While normally our model is doing $________ deals, we are open to helping you because we know most other providers are mediocre. We will be more expensive by ___%, but we will be more effective and the result will be more outstanding by about _________%. ” This way you can still charge a premium. Consider this: If a deal is $4,000 or $40,000 and you’re making 20%, on $4,000 you make $800 and on $40,000 you make $8,000. You want to experiment. As long as you have the performance validation that what you provide is high-end, you will make more with bigger deals. You have to do so many more smaller deals to make the equivalent of one big deal. So, start with the big ones and if it doesn’t work you can go down market. However, make sure you and/or your providers are so exceptionally qualitative and high on references and profile that you/they are worth it.
Q: “How do I position me and/or my company as high-end?”
A: Your position needs to be the preeminent provider that can be easily validated and verified before you ever make a commitment. You can say to prospective clients, “I will meet with you first to ensure you are compatible. Then I will introduce you to our process/providers. You can judge it/them against anything/anyone else you might have considered. It will either be clearly evident that my process/team is dramatically and incomparably superior – or it won’t. If you want
mediocrity and you want to save ___%, I can’t help you. If you want mastery and greatness – then we have the process/people to do it. You have to decide because I can’t sell you. If you want something everyone else has that is not unique, profound or distinctive, then there are a lot of mediocre options to do it. My company refuses to even go there because that is not what we do. If you want this done so exquisitely that you can’t wait to experience the following: ______________ …then we are the ones for you. If you want to do something everyone else does/has that is basically a commodity, we can’t decide that for you. If you want something only we have that is so proprietary and so elevated, that’s what we have.”
You’re likely familiar with the 3 Ways To Grow A Business model since I’ve posted it on this blog. Once you have this model well established in your business, you can utilize the 3 ADVANCED Ways To Grow Your Business…
Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #1: Every year penetrate one new market. Take your product, service, knowledge, intellectual property, or skill to one new market. A market could be a different industry, city, country or even a different application.
Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #2: Every year introduce one new product or service to your existing clients. You can introduce one new low-priced or no-price product or service in order to make it easy for market place to start a relationship with you – and/or – you can introduce a very expensive product or service because in any buyer base there are individuals who want more advancement, specificity, individualization and more.
Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #3: Every year acquire a similar business in your same field and/or acquire a feeder business. Let me explain…
First, you can buy a similar business in your field by paying the owner out of the profits and without having to write a big check. When you combine two businesses, you can eliminate a lot of overhead from the business you buy. If you have a good company that has areas of expense right now and you buy a struggling business where you combined their buyers (that you don’t have) with your buyers while eliminating the majority of the overhead they have, you would make a low-profit or unprofitable business very profitable….and you can do this over and over again. In terms of a feeder business, you can acquire a business that feeds your business OR a business that is fed by the business you’re in. When you buy a business, you have to think about what else do people buy before, at the same time, after and instead of the product or service. Once you identify these possibilities, you now have a number of other businesses you can acquire (or even start) that would either feed your business by bringing people to you who are ready to buy your product or service OR your product or service feeds the other business…and it becomes connected, synergistic, and everything feeds one another.
When you’re determining where to focus your energy, time, effort, resources, capital, and more, you have to factor in the value of the best alternatives you forgo.
Answer these 5 questions to ensure you’re getting everything you can out of all you do:
Question #1: When you consider what you want to do, what’s the best area you can pursue using your skill/capital/relationships that has the highest success probability for the time you can invest? Question #2: When you consider what you want to do, where are the biggest gaps or voids in the market where you can take the greatest advantage?
Question #3: When you consider what you want to do, where can you bring your greatest advantage with the least amount of capital/time/resource?
Question #4: When you consider what you want to do, where can you partner, or whom can you partner with, that has the highest probability of you being successful?
Question #5: When you consider what you want to do, where are you ultimately trying to get to?
All Buyers Are NOT Equal: An
Interesting Way To Find
Overlooked Profit Opportunities In
Your Current Business
Jay Abraham May 26 2016
If you look at your company and you analyze: 1. Where you get your buyers…
2. How many different buying cycles there are within your buyer base… 3. Concentrations of types of buyers you didn’t know about…
…you can start to focus and specialize. Here’s what that means: Most companies don’t know which buyers are most valuable, what source of buyers are the most valuable, what kind of buyers buy the most often, what buyers are the most
profitable, and on. You can find hundreds of thousands — even millions of dollars — of opportunity you didn’t even realize exist. As you analyze the data, you will realize certain types of ads, marketing, sources of marketing and more produce a higher or lower quality of buyer.
In fact, certain kinds of marketing may produce somebody who is more profitable right away, but that buyer may not buy as many things for as long a time as a buyer that came from another source. When you don’t know these things, it may looks like
the buyers from a particular source are great – when in fact they are only great because they make you profit one time, but they don’t buyer over and over again. Another source of buyer may be less profitable initially, but buy more things, more often, for longer…but you may not even realize it.
As it relates to buyer concentrations, you may accidentally or unknowingly have a huge number of buyers in a category – say, Doctors, just as an example — even though you don’t sell to that category of buyer intentionally. If that’s the case, you would now be privy to the fact that the product or service really appeals to that category of buyer – in this case, Doctors — and you can start targeting Doctors, or whatever that category of buyer may be.
When you realize all buyers are not equal, you gain an enormous advantage and insight from analyzing your buyer data that you can leverage and harness to maximize your profit and impact.
Harnessing The Power of
Access…
Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There’s a provocative and overlooked question I want you to consider… Ask yourself: “Who can I access?”
The answer to this question can lead to vast array of opportunities in your life. Think about it – access can mean:
* Acquiring knowledge from a mentor * Involving an advisor or investor
* Partnering with an individual or company that has a list * Getting introduced to other people who are in your market
* And many more possibilities…
You want to find everybody that has a product or service or media that reaches the same kind of a prospect or decision maker you are going to want to reach.
You want to go to vendors or those types of products and see who they know outside the market you are targeting who do the same thing that might be a good company or individual for you to partner with, or get to mentor you, or who already have a success formula you can model and simply pay them a license. In fact, these vendors might also know salespeople who are unhappy working for their current company and that you could hire full-time or part-time to represent you.
You want to find people who have stature to their name. It can be celebrities, individuals with jobs who have incredible importance relative to what you’re doing, people who write article for online or offline media, retired people with great resumes – and you want to ethically utilize these individuals by seeing if they will become advisors to you and see if they will let you use their name in your marketing and promotions so you increase credibility, give you insights and guidance you may not currently have, and even give you access to their network of relationships.
As you gain access, you want to play to your strengths and avoid depending on your non-strengths, and find other people who possess the strengths you don’t and find ways to get them to help you. For example, if you don’t know a lot about technology, you can find someone who does and give them equity in your business or a share of the revenue that results from your business in exchange for collaborating with them. If they would normally charge something you couldn’t afford, pay them more (yes more!) but as a percentage of the sales that come.
You want to get a Mastermind Alliance. This is similar, but different from advisors. Advisors possess distinctions you can use to your marketing advantage along with their expertise and network. Mastermind Alliance is the process of going into your community, community or anywhere in the world and approaching far more successful people in a very broad and diverse number of fields/industries –
commercial, political, sports, and so on – and asking them to become part of your Mastermind Alliance. You get them once a month or once a quarter to spend time together either in person if it’s local or remotely if they are all over the country. Tell them what you are doing, how you are doing it, the goals you have for your business,
and you want them to give ideas for doing it better, faster, safer and with more effectiveness because these people have been where you are trying to go.
You want to go to everyone and anyone you know, and ask them who they know who would be a good prospective buyer, or investor, or introducer of you to other people, or whatever the case may be in your specific situation. Like a fountain that has cascading flows, you have infinite outreach when you understand this.
There are tons of people, organizations, media, experts and influencers that already have what you want…but you can’t maximize your ability to harness this power until your first understand and are clear about:
1. What are you trying to accomplish – and why?
2. What skillsets and abilities do you have and not have – and what are your strongest skills?
Get clear on this, utilize even a few of these strategies and a world of possibility, opportunity and access will open up to you.
What Marketing Is All About (Part
1)
Jay Abraham May 26 2016
The purpose of marketing is to educate and make a preferred target market that has the highest probability of being a buyer aware of a couple things:
1. That they have a problem or are pursuing an opportunity (and you have to get them clear on what it is…)
2. Have them see the advantage of either solving the problem or accomplishing the opportunity…
3. Have them see that you understand them, their problem, or opportunity better than anyone else because you learn to express it better than anyone else (and then you have to get them motivated to seek that solution or achievement immediately and only from you.)
This is what marketing is all about.
It’s about gaining the trust of your market.
It’s about showing your market the benefit, advantage, and improvements in outcome that they can expect by doing business with you.
It’s about speaking to your market in language no one else has and showing them you understand their objective better than they do.
It’s about understanding the most tangible and intangible levels of risk that consciously and subconsciously occur to your prospective market and alleviating, eliminating, reducing or overcoming these risks and making it easier for your market to say yes than no.
It’s about being seen as the only viable and meaningful trusted source they can turn to.
It’s about having your clients best interest at heart. In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* “I’m a service business and I need a facility, but I don’t have the money for it. What should I do?” * “How do I make my sales team more effective?”
* “I want to become a preeminent expert/consultant in my field. Where do I start?”
Q: “I’m a trainer and I need a facility, but I don’t have the money for it. What should I do?” A: Find a facility that tends to be unused on weekends and evenings. Go to them and explain you’re starting a business and you think this business has the capacity to utilize their facilities every week/every evening/every month/etc. Tell them you have a very limited budget, but if they will invest trust in you, you think you will be viable and meaningful to them within ___ months, and