Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams

My business partner in the whole “MCG Sports Memorabilia” thing, the great Bruce Hultgren, produces a stella e-zine entitled ‘Daily Life Tips’… and the other day he wrote about setting and achieving your goals, in a way I’ve never really heard articulated so well before.

He spoke about ‘The Cumulative Affect’ and it blew my mind…

As Bruce wrote…

If I wanted to change my body shape (which I do) in the next 12 months - then I will have to do something over and over for a time in order to see results - agreed?

Then of course - revisit it regularly to stay in focus and on target.

See, one of the biggest things that stops any of us achieving a goal is that we look at it was one big result… not a series of cumulative actions. Which is all it actually is.

It’s this focus on actions rather then goals (which is also the principle of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, which I will write about in a future post), that allow us to get started and see progress, which stimulates motivation and instills habits.

Instead of looking at a project or goal as a result, try looking at it as a series of small cumulative actions… and if you do those ‘simple’ actions over and over again, the result will take care of itself.

I was having a discussion with my partners at Infiniti Telecommunications today, about when we first started to employ staff, and how the hardest thing I found was learning to deal, justify and live with the whole ‘throwing stones in glass houses’ side of management.

Now, I am the first to admit that historically I am far from being the Michael Phelps of time management, or keeping promises relating to “to-dos”; although that has all started to change:

Nor am I historically the best at a number of things that my team are employed to do (this includes ‘behaviors’, as well as ’skills & tasks’) … and this was my conundrum; “How do I have a go at an employee for not doing something, that I know I don’t do myself”

I had a real issue with this - I can’t *yell* at Suzie for not remembering to do ABC, when I forgot to do ABC when I previously did that task…. How do I deal with Tony for making that mistake, when I often made the same mistake before he was hired to take that task away from me ?

My ‘well-meaning’ mums words of “don’t berate someone for doing something that you do yourself etc etc” kept haunting me. I felt that i was always standing in my ‘entrepreneurial glass boardroom, throwing stones at my team”

But then I realized something… something very obvious, and from the outside (now) looks very basic:

“That’s why they are here… They are employed to do the things I either didn’t have the time to do or didn’t have the skills to execute at the required level“

Most business owners only (consciously) think their employees are there to offer leverage. Leverage in the form of being able to now serve two customers at once. Leverage in the form of being able to have stock being dispatched, while at the same time making the next sales pitch etc etc - Typically, business owners look at employing staff in the same way Tom Hanks did in Multiplicty.

But, when I really got and understood that my staff are their to ” competently fill the gaps”, I was able to *justify* to myself that it’s more then OK for me to sometimes expect more from an employee than myself - especially when it’s relating to a task I openly acknowledged I was not sufficient in and thus hired for.

And, it’s the lesson that; “you hire staff to be better then you” that’s been one of the biggest hurdles I have faced in my entrepreneurial journey.. and it’s such a big hurdle so many entrepreneurs face - The willingness to “let go, acknowledge that you don’t have to be perfect and the ONLY way to grow your business is to hire others and that those people are there to not only do tasks you don’t have time to do, but do the tasks you are not good at.

If you’ve been around the info-marketing game for awhile now, you’d have a good grasp of the sales funnel model… and how you need to structure your products range in a way then ensure your offerings fit along the sales funnel so people opt-into your funnel with a FREE report, e-book or seminar and then move through the funnel by purchasing ever increasing priced products and services.

BUT, if your upsell conversions are not where you want them to be, how do you structure your sales pipe to ensure your customers NEED your next offering and continue along the slippery slide ?

Just offering a range of ever increasing priced products around the same niche topic ain’t going to do it folks… You need to structure the information you are offering at each stage of the funnel so that it’s an obvious and needed extension of the last product your customer has bought…

Enter the Why-What-How Structure of Information Marketing.

Let’s take a look an an analog (traditionally offline) example of how to implement this structure - The ’stock or share trading’ education niche.

Stage 1. They offer a free report, or no-cost evening seminar where they talk exclusively on WHY you must start trading equities; The speak about how your 401k or Superannuation won’t be enough for you to survive on, they pull pretty graphs showing how the stock markets value as risen a steady X% of the past 16 years and they even provide convincing examples of how others are now making $100,000 per month using the strategies they teach - All in an effort to convince you WHY.

Stage 2. At the end of the WHY presentation, they pitch a book, audio program or home study program that details exactly WHAT you must do to achieve this level of passive income. The course covers that you need to set-up a trading account, use a latest meta software and follow a fool-proof system. It talks in generics, on a high level simply explaining WHAT you must do. And as a customer you walk away feeling satisfied because you now know WHAT you need to do to get started.

But hang on, 3 weeks have past and you haven’t really taken any action… how can that be? You know WHY you must do something and WHAT it is you need to do?

But do you really know HOW to do it?

Enter stage 3. The 2 day live weekend event. It’s at this high priced seminar (at the bottom of the companies sales funnel) that they will reveal the inside secrets, the step-by-step techniques on HOW to do it… They will walk you through the exact steps on setting up a trading account, they will do live presentations on HOW TO use the trading software all so you can walk away and start doing.

It’s this structuring of information that ensures the next sale - They don’t reveal the HOW-TO information too early, they won’t teach the HOW-TO in the first to stages because if they do - ‘Why would you need their upsell product?”

What you need to do is structure your sales funnel (and offerings) so that your customers NEED to buy your next product… It’s about leaving the ‘key’ to it all in the next level down the sales funnel, so the customer must have the next product to finish the jigsaw puzzle that is your niche.

So how can you apply this WHY, WHAT, HOW approach to your internet marketing sales funnel?

Here’s a few examples:

Most people get the sales funnel model, and have structured their PRODUCT OFFERING in a correct way, with each product getting more and more expensive, but the majority of people haven’t structured their INFORMATION OFFERING to match.

If you are finding you are not converting your up-sells at a reasonable level, take a step back, forget about tweaking the sales letter…. and take a look at your information structure…

Are you giving away too much GOLD in your early products?

Do your customers really need this new, more expensive product to overcome the need they went looking to fulfill when they first downloaded your FREE e-book ?

If you find that you are giving your customers the HOW TO right up front, why would they spend money later to learn the Why or What? Because when you break it down, everything you offer falls into one of these three categories, so make sure you reveal them at the right time.

Still lost? Try this?

Re-write your entry level product, that’s the free report or ebook to simply reiterate to your prospects WHY they need your stuff, build the bond by showing you understand their frustrations and even throw in some new issues that hadn’t thought of. (Most people attend a stock trading free seminar to make more money now, but leave thinking they need this just to survive when their on the pension) That’s all your free entry offering has to do - build trust and understanding with your prospect so they feel you ‘get-them’

Then jump right to producing the HOW-TO product, and make sure this course covers everything they need to do to reach the holly-grail of your niche, every step-by-step technique they need.

Once this end-product is created, produce an extra-large executive summary outlining WHAT the end-product covers.. talk in generics not details. Make this report/audio/course a educational “list” of WHAT they will need to do to fulfill their need. And you guessed it, this “executive summary” (AKA the how-to’s index page) becomes your WHAT product, the second offering in the sales funnel.

For those playing along at home… please leave other examples of how you might implement this Why, What, How Structure to your info-marketing….

OK, so I’m a little behind the conversation.. like 3 months… but there’s been a lot of chatter recently about “moving the freeline”

Now, the “free line” concept comes from the sales funnel, where typically, the sales process begins with a free ebook, white-paper or audio download… in an effort to build trust with the prospect so they will buy from you further down the funnel. Nearly everyone online has experienced this - it’s what the industry was built on.

Moving the free line is the concept of giving even more stuff away for free and converting what previously were paid for products into free resources. So, what was previously a front end product you had to pay for, becomes a free resource now sitting above the free line.

Eben Pagan is the man who has been credited with coining the phrase and this is his take on “moving the free line:

“MY EXPERIENCES MOVING THE FREE LINE

… BUT that’s exactly it, and the point so many people are yet to articulate:

You are not giving away free resources - You are trading your resources for something of value that is perceived to be free.

As an business owner, online or off (there I go again; on my “you’re not an internet marketer, you are an internet business owner” rant) you never want to give anything away for free, you always need to get something of value in exchange for this “free”. Notice I said ’something of value’, not necessarily money.

An email subscriber (as Eben mentions) is something of value, that doesn’t cost the prospect anything out of their pocket.. but it does have an empirical value.

This empirical value can be calculated by working out how much profit you made last year, and divide that by the number of subscribers on your list…

And that right there folks, is what each subscriber is worth to you.

So in reality you are *selling* what is perceived as free, for a real $$ amount (in future income), because you are trading an ebook for an email address,… which in turn is worth $X to you.

So if by moving the free line you can exchange more email addresses for “free” stuff then, and only then, does the theory/concept/practice makes commercial sense.

So for those playing along at home…

No matter what form of business you are in;

Give a free ebook… get an email subscriber.
Give a discount.. demand a referral (or three).
Give an audio… extract a suggestion/feedback/response.
Give a bonus… require a testimonial.
Give X… insist on Y
Go above and beyond… get some value in return.

I’m so excited.. I just came across this website that appears to have embraced the phenomena known as web2.0

I can even picture how this forward thinking company came to have a crack at making their website more then just the typical brochure…

It was about an hour or two into the traditional end-of-month long lunch… Fueled by the company-charged pinot grigio and a belly full of confidence you get after 4 days on the job, a young marketing-intern who strategically weaseled his into the seat next to the marketing executive began to preach the gosbal that is web2.0

Equally under the influence of the aforementioned pinot, the “self-deluded-in-touch’ marketing manager starts to ramble on about his nightly struggle trying to drag his teenage daughter’s attention away from her shinny macbook air… and gives this pimply faced intern the project of “face-spacing” and “my-booking” their website.

So…

Fast foward two months…Beauty Addicts‘ has teamed up with iJustine and created a quisi-web 2.0 page on their site.

The page has distinct web 2.0 feel to it - Fans of iJustine can check out what BeautyADDICT products she uses, learn which products make which look, watch a video of her applying the products… PLUS it even intergrates her Twitter feed and Flickr roll into the page.

How cool is that, I here to say…. It’s about time, I hear to celebrate… Finally a business “get’s it”, I hear you scream…

Well here’s the kicker…

They haven’t opened it up to the public and began to make a community out of it….

This idea has so much potential as a really cool web 2.0 community… BeautyADDICTS customers (read: community) could share their favorite product combinations, display the products they have bought, upload photos of their favorite looks, interact and leave comments on each other pages… AND THEN INSTANTLY BUY THE PRODUCTS THEIR FRIENDS RECOMMEND.

Even the url is perfect for a web2.0 site, BeautyADDICTS.com… I can’t think of a better url - If they changed the focus of their site and made the community a primary focus of the site, with their products secondary I would almost guarantee they would shift more products - Which at the end of the day should be their SOLE focus of their website.

Speaking of web2.0…

Why hasn’t more businesses embraced the power of facebook and created applications like Apple Mac Addict…

It’s such an easy and effective way of allowing your customers to participate in your brand, generate some online-word-of-mouth, create some free over-the-shoulder advertising… all where their cusomters ‘hang-out’ most; online.

For a business to survive moving forward, it’s the participation element they need to focus their marketing on. The marketing mix no longer consists of just 4 P’s - product, price, place, promotion.

Participation is the 5th and most important element these days… and that’s why I am working on an entire post dedicated to it… Stay tuned for that.

P.S. For those following my twitter feed, the firefox plugin video has been delayed… please speak amoungst yourselves while I get use to this Mac.

P.P.S. If you know of any forward thinking businesses who have successfully embraced web2.0 please leave a comment below and let me know.

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