Metadata
- Author: Allan Dib
- ASIN: B01B35M3SM
- ISBN: 1989025013
- Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01B35M3SM
- Kindle link
Highlights
almost no business problem that can’t be solved — location: 84 ^ref-34403
when you’ve taken care of yourself, you have a chance to help others. — location: 86 ^ref-53434
when people blame their industry they are just playing the blame game. — location: 118 ^ref-10502
So going back to our example, a good plumber is not necessarily the best person to run a plumbing business. — location: 129 ^ref-10822
you must resolve to become good at the business of what you do—not just the technical thing you do. — location: 132 ^ref-815
While no one can guarantee your success, having a plan dramatically increases your probability of success. — location: 149 ^ref-51914
96% of the stuff you do is a waste of time (comparatively). — location: 189 ^ref-12122
lack of information isn’t the issue holding back the bottom 80% of business owners—it’s human behavior and mindset. — location: 196 ^ref-14143
Struggling business owners will spend time to save money, whereas successful business owners will spend money to save time. — location: 200 ^ref-22727
Because you can always get more money, but you can never get more time. So you need to ensure the stuff you spend your time on makes the biggest impact. — location: 201 ^ref-10062
By far the biggest leverage point in any business is marketing. If you get 10% better at marketing, this can have an exponential or multiplying effect on your bottom line. — location: 210 ^ref-28486
marketing is the same—because that’s where the money is. — location: 214 ^ref-29976
Marketing is where the money is.
The marketing plan ended up being the 20% part of the business planning process that produced 80% of the result. — location: 218 ^ref-8941
The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the 4% of effort that generates 64% (or more) of the result in your business. — location: 225 ^ref-41942
marketing is the strategy you use for getting your ideal target market to know you, — location: 246 ^ref-46104
Understanding the difference between strategy and tactics is absolutely key to marketing success. — location: 268 ^ref-5143
Strategy is the big-picture planning you do prior to the tactics. — location: 269 ^ref-2867
Strategy is planning what to build, the features and such. Tactics is the actual execution by hiring a team.
Strategy without tactics leads to paralysis by analysis. — location: 276 ^ref-63640
Marketing must be one of your major activities if you’re to have business success. — location: 291 ^ref-37726
If they don’t buy, they’ll never know how good your products or services are. — location: 292 ^ref-58821
Following the path of other successful businesses is smart, but it’s vital that you understand the full strategy you’re following and that you’re able to execute it. — location: 341 ^ref-20438
direct response marketing is “money at a discount.” — location: 349 ^ref-21616
direct response ads, they become lead generating tools rather than just name recognition tools. — location: 353 ^ref-31929
At the beginning of the “before” phase, prospects typically don’t even know you exist. — location: 395 ^ref-16609
At the beginning of the “during” phase, leads have indicated some interest in your offer. — location: 402 ^ref-13277
At the beginning of the “after” phase, customers have already given you money. — location: 411 ^ref-45055
The after phase never ends — location: 411 ^ref-15287
Prospects are people who may not even yet know you exist. — location: 442 ^ref-21074
Many business owners worry about narrowing down their target market because they don’t want to exclude any potential customers. — location: 460 ^ref-14137
To be a successful small business marketer you need laser-like focus on a narrow target market, sometimes called a niche. — location: 471 ^ref-52120
A niche is a tightly defined portion of a subcategory. — location: 474 ^ref-16835
Being all things to all people leads to marketing failure. — location: 495 ^ref-35429
Targeting a tight niche allows you to become a big fish in a small pond. It allows you to dominate a category or geography in a way that is impossible by being general. — location: 497 ^ref-31442
A specialist is sought after rather than shopped on price. — location: 507 ^ref-49041
Trying to target everyone really means that you’re targeting no one. — location: 511 ^ref-25694
Dominate a niche, then once you own it, do the same with another and then another. — location: 516 ^ref-57688
Remember it’s not about the “turnover,” it’s all about the “left over.” — location: 530 ^ref-65002
Unless you belong to your target market, then a large part of your initial marketing efforts should be directed at in-depth research, interviews and careful study of your target market. — location: 562 ^ref-63186
It’s like these businesses are visiting a slot machine in a casino. — location: 636 ^ref-26439
Rather than trying to sell directly from your ad, simply invite prospects to put their hand up and indicate interest. — location: 651 ^ref-5560
don’t leave anything to chance. — location: 668 ^ref-2591
From a customer’s perspective, there is no compelling reason to buy from them and they make sales just because they happen to be there. — location: 673 ^ref-9821
The entire goal of your USP is to answer this question: Why should I buy from you rather than from your nearest competitor? — location: 700 ^ref-33001
Quality and great service are expectations; — location: 705 ^ref-61050
People only find out about your quality and great service after they’ve bought. — location: 706 ^ref-17250
The uniqueness may be in the way it is packaged, delivered, supported or even sold. — location: 721 ^ref-31792
What do they really want? It’s rarely the thing you are selling; it’s usually the result of the thing you are selling. — location: 727 ^ref-12703
confusion leads to lost sales. — location: 748 ^ref-44115
being unique is a dangerous, difficult and expensive place to be. — location: 759 ^ref-41413
the actual product being sold is a commodity and what makes it remarkable is something totally peripheral to what you are buying. — location: 792 ^ref-24327
By charging higher prices, you attract a better quality client. — location: 802 ^ref-46187
You know [problem]? Well, what we do is [solution]. In fact, [proof]. — location: 831 ^ref-42923
Of all the products and services you offer, which do you have the most confidence in delivering? — location: 850 ^ref-51024
Of all the products and services you offer, which do you enjoy delivering the most? — location: 852 ^ref-28071
What are the best emotionally charged words and phrases that will capture and hold the attention of this market? — location: 856 ^ref-9653
purchasing is done with emotions and justified with logic after the fact. — location: 871 ^ref-35134
What is the result that takes them from point A to point B which you can take them through while making a good profit? — location: 883 ^ref-18947
Reason why: when you have a great offer, you need to justify why you’re doing this. — location: 888 ^ref-40166
Value stacking: packing in many bonuses can make your offer seem like a no-brainer. — location: 894 ^ref-53581
you need an outrageous guarantee. — location: 908 ^ref-33164
You need to make dealing with you a risk-free transaction, one where the risk is on you should you fail to deliver on your promises. — location: 910 ^ref-56161
your offer needs to have an element of scarcity, a reason why people need to respond immediately. — location: 911 ^ref-27832
So many times businesses talk about features and benefits rather than speaking to the pain that the customer already has. — location: 925 ^ref-11058
They want pain relief, not features and benefits. — location: 927 ^ref-30226
Selling features and benefits is the best way to turn your prospects into price shoppers who view your product as a commodity bought solely on price. — location: 937 ^ref-17925
Remember, people are much more willing to pay for a cure than for prevention. — location: 939 ^ref-46136
Almost no other skill will reward you as richly as being able to write compelling words. — location: 942 ^ref-33961
The fact is, people buy from people, not from corporations. — location: 963 ^ref-14764
You need to write your sales copy as though you were talking directly to a single person. — location: 965 ^ref-12306
People love authenticity, personality, and opinion. Even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll respect you for being real and open. — location: 969 ^ref-1675
People respond to pictures and videos of other people. — location: 974 ^ref-9037
One example is by adding a video to your website. It can be as simple as a talking-head video of you describing your products and services, which you can shoot and upload in the space of five minutes using a handheld camera or even a smartphone. — location: 976 ^ref-38080
Use it to give opinion, insight, advice, and commentary, and above all, be yourself and be authentic. — location: 980 ^ref-10286
The masses are living lives of quiet desperation. They are absolutely craving something that grabs or entertains them, even if it’s just for a moment. Your job is to give it to them. — location: 990 ^ref-36200
Here is just a small sample of the most common compelling words: Free You Save Results Health Love Proven Money New — location: 997 ^ref-5337
Easy Safety Guaranteed Discovery — location: 1001 ^ref-59810
The five major motivators of human behavior, especially buying behavior, are: Fear Love Greed Guilt Pride — location: 1004 ^ref-21256
Fear, especially the fear of loss, is one of the most powerful emotional hot buttons you can push in your sales copy. — location: 1024 ^ref-42211
Emotional direct response copywriting is a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. — location: 1041 ^ref-47067
Traditional selling tells us to overcome objections; however, in reality, objections are rarely voiced. — location: 1055 ^ref-46033
tell potential prospects who your product or service is NOT for. — location: 1057 ^ref-18766
First, it filters out people who aren’t part of your target market — location: 1058 ^ref-53834
Second, it immediately makes it more credible when you tell them who this product is for. — location: 1060 ^ref-16058
Last, the prospects who your product or service is for will more strongly feel it is tailored to their needs than if you had said it’s for anyone and everyone. — location: 1062 ^ref-58406
“The enemy in common” is a great way of leveraging the “it’s not my fault” mentality. Take something relevant from your prospect’s blame list, side with them and tie it into a solution you have to offer. — location: 1079 ^ref-22854
Remember, what gets measured, gets managed. — location: 1129 ^ref-56513
Remember the entire goal of your ad is for your prospect to say, “Hey that’s for me.” — location: 1181 ^ref-10669
the goal of your front end offer is to create a customer and make enough profit from the first transaction to at least cover the customer acquisition cost. — location: 1198 ^ref-54138
Some people have the perception that social media marketing is “free.” It’s only truly free if your time is worth nothing. — location: 1238 ^ref-47377
So, spending huge amounts of time and money building up a profile and audience on these networks ends up building up their assets rather than your own. — location: 1240 ^ref-39112
Building a database of email subscribers plays a central role in your online marketing strategy. — location: 1254 ^ref-11518
A prominent part of your website should be an email opt-in form. — location: 1255 ^ref-8296
If you didn’t capture these interested non-buyers, you’d likely lose them forever. — location: 1260 ^ref-12812
If you build your business on someone else’s platform and it starts to decline in popularity, your key online marketing asset will be stranded. — location: 1273 ^ref-34082
Email is a very personal medium and even if you’re sending the same email to thousands of subscribers, write as though you’re emailing a single person. — location: 1280 ^ref-61968
To keep the relationship warm, stay in touch with your email subscribers at the very least monthly. — location: 1289 ^ref-27910
All healthy relationships are based on an exchange of value. — location: 1294 ^ref-30761
An email marketing platform can be one of the best salespeople in your organization. — location: 1300 ^ref-62786
moving people emotionally towards a desired action is what marketing is all about. — location: 1322 ^ref-39635
One is the most dangerous number in your business. It makes businesses brittle. — location: 1368 ^ref-54182
Identify and eliminate single points of failure in your business. — location: 1388 ^ref-56731
A common scenario I see when it comes to media strategy is that many small businesses have only one source of new business. I advocate having at least five different sources of new leads and customers. — location: 1394 ^ref-61449
Lead capture is all about properly handling interest and building your future sales pipeline. — location: 1416 ^ref-6708
The pressure is on every single day to hunt successfully—it’s a constant battle. — location: 1425 ^ref-23164
By creating a lead-generating ad, you increase your addressable market to 40%. — location: 1473 ^ref-35818
When you educate and teach, you are seen as an expert and an authority. — location: 1480 ^ref-49819
At the absolute center of your marketing infrastructure is your database of customers and prospects, but to manage your database effectively, you really need a customer relationship management (CRM) system. — location: 1503 ^ref-18797
Nurturing leads is the process of taking people from being vaguely interested in what you have to offer to desiring it and wanting to do business with you. — location: 1510 ^ref-48283
One of the stand-out things that Joe did was to keep in touch with his customers constantly. — location: 1531 ^ref-9204
the money is in the follow-up. — location: 1547 ^ref-32474
You build a relationship, giving them value in advance of them buying anything from you, building trust and demonstrating authority in your field of expertise in the process. — location: 1549 ^ref-61213
Don’t make the mistake of being cheap and efficient when it comes to wooing prospects. — location: 1669 ^ref-65094
One of the commonalities amongst high-growth businesses is that they focus heavily on marketing and make a lot of offers. — location: 1674 ^ref-49406
Another important attribute of high-growth businesses is that they’re not timid with their offers. — location: 1678 ^ref-10486
More compelling and more frequent offers = rapid business growth. — location: 1682 ^ref-18540
Business is a team sport, one in which you’re never going to win on your own. — location: 1693 ^ref-17567
The lack of a manager role is often why a marketing infrastructure never gets up and running properly. — location: 1707 ^ref-22255
Lack of a functional, running marketing infrastructure will harm, or possibly kill, your business. — location: 1718 ^ref-43227
A marketing calendar sets out what marketing activities have to happen on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis, — location: 1721 ^ref-31994
Remember, money is a renewable resource—you can always get more money but you can never get more time. — location: 1746 ^ref-33343
Sales conversion is all about creating enough trust and demonstrating enough value to motivate interested leads to become paying customers. — location: 1791 ^ref-30210
Another equally bad approach taken in many new businesses is expecting sales to happen because of the mere fact that the business exists. — location: 1819 ^ref-9981
people will generally take you at your own appraisal—unless proven otherwise. — location: 1856 ^ref-11592
You must stop selling and start educating, consulting and advising prospects about the benefits your products and services deliver compared to each and every competitor in your category. — location: 1897 ^ref-2424
Become the expert in your category or industry. — location: 1907 ^ref-25802
Consultative, advisory selling is the most cost-effective, the most enduring, the most impactful and the most powerful marketing strategy a business owner could ever devise. — location: 1909 ^ref-56116
People know that while a large company might not give the very best service, they are unlikely to be outright scammed by them. — location: 1918 ^ref-59990
So why not make a point of talking about something that you’re already doing? — location: 1981 ^ref-34604
A smart entrepreneur will look at their business from the eyes of a fearful, skeptical prospect and reverse all the perceived risks so that the path to the sale is much smoother. — location: 1983 ^ref-26802
Fear of making a suboptimal choice prevents them from making any choice at all. — location: 2011 ^ref-18161
People tend to overestimate how much they will use a product or service when they are at the point of purchase—my — location: 2028 ^ref-9652
A rule of thumb often used is that 10% of your customer base would pay ten times more and 1% of your customers would pay 100 times more. — location: 2038 ^ref-1754
Regardless which specific strategies you implement, it is important to continually test and measure. — location: 2047 ^ref-7449
As a business owner you should make it abundantly clear to all staff that sales are the lifeblood of the business and that everyone is in sales. — location: 2067 ^ref-46798
responding to sales opportunities is their job. — location: 2069 ^ref-16652
You’ll then find ways of doing more business with them and increasing their lifetime value. — location: 2111 ^ref-1698
continually focus on wowing their customers, which turns them into raving fans — location: 2131 ^ref-17882
a big part of the battle you’ll fight is getting people to do what they need to do to achieve results with your product or service. — location: 2160 ^ref-36238
Our goal is for our customers to achieve results. — location: 2164 ^ref-53857
you need to spoon-feed them through the process of getting results. — location: 2170 ^ref-33307
Remember your goal is to create a tribe of raving fans—not — location: 2179 ^ref-34061
Your customers don’t just want to be serviced. They want to be entertained. — location: 2188 ^ref-21645
You need to be a thought leader in your industry, someone who is sought out for opinion and comment. — location: 2248 ^ref-9173
successful entrepreneurs are predominantly content creators whereas wantrepreneurs are predominantly content consumers. — location: 2250 ^ref-32567
the most valuable commodity is reputation. — location: 2258 ^ref-12842
tell your audience about all the effort that goes into delivering your product or service. — location: 2286 ^ref-13260
Don’t let your efforts and skill go unnoticed. — location: 2289 ^ref-46542
no one cares about your logo, company name or some dubious claim about being the leader in your industry. — location: 2293 ^ref-43948
Creating systems is one thing that took me from struggling and broke in business to doing well and successfully exiting multiple startups. — location: 2299 ^ref-19788
Systems allow mere mortals to run an extraordinary business. Once you have a business system that is replicable, people will want to pay you large sums of money for it. — location: 2305 ^ref-2164
Our goal is to eliminate the biggest bottleneck from your business—YOU. — location: 2366 ^ref-50317
Importantly, this also ensures that your customers get a consistent experience. — location: 2401 ^ref-36191
customer won on price will be lost on price. — location: 2488 ^ref-54309
Leads: calculate the number of new leads that come into your business (lead capture and lead nurturing were covered in Chapters 4 and 5). Conversion rate: calculate the percentage of leads you converted into paying customers. (We covered sales conversion in Chapter 6.) Average transaction value: know the average dollar amount that customers spend with you. (We looked at several ways of increasing this number earlier in this chapter.) Break-even point: identify the dollar amount you need to make to keep your doors open. It encompasses such things as rent, staff, utilities and any other ongoing operating expenses. — location: 2612 ^ref-1665
Generally your customer base can be divided up into four categories.2 The Tribe: this set of customers are raving fans, supporters and cheerleaders who promote your business and are actively conspiring for your success. This is healthy revenue that builds your business. Growing these types of customers is the key to being successful and achieving hyper-growth. The Churners: churners are customers who really can’t afford you on the basis of either time or money. Because they can’t afford you, you might have engaged in overly aggressive sales and marketing tactics, overhyped promises or heavy discounts to get them to sign up. Then, when they discover they’re not a good fit, they churn out. They leave you, and if you have too many of these, you catch a “churn flu,” which can be fatal to your business. These types of customers can also create brand problems for your business, as they often turn around and go back out into the marketplace and tell everybody that you’re a liar or label you as dishonest. The Vampires: unlike churners, vampires can afford you but you can’t afford them. They consume a massively disproportionate amount of resources compared with your average customer while paying the same amount as other customers do. They usually aren’t content to work with the teams that you have in place. They always need to talk to the CEO and they often terrorize and manipulate the CEO into terrorizing the team in their interest. They just suck the blood right out of your business. The Snow Leopard: this might be your biggest customer, one who makes up a very large chunk of your revenue and pays you a lot of money. They’re exquisite and beautiful but extremely rare and almost impossible to replicate. Most businesses have a client like this. They also tend to be customers who are fun to work with. They’re so wonderful that the team and the leaders in the business love to spend a lot of time with them. Overall, they’re a bad investment because they’re so rare and therefore don’t represent a great growth strategy. — location: 2699 ^ref-5729
Not firing problem customers is likely costing you huge amounts of time, money and aggravation. — location: 2733 ^ref-45759
A customer who sees you responding to and resolving their genuine complaint is far more likely to buy from you again and recommend you to others. — location: 2741 ^ref-24575
Firing problem customers frees up valuable time and resources that can be used for focusing on and building value with existing tribe members as well as acquiring new ones. — location: 2756 ^ref-40967
Firing the detractors gives you the time needed to show more love to your high-value tribe members. Doing so builds loyalty and can very quickly result in an increase in lifetime value and healthy revenue that far outweighs the loss of the polluted revenue. — location: 2761 ^ref-46195
making referrals happen requires something very active on your part. — location: 2795 ^ref-12036
You, however, are an entrepreneur, which means you make things happen for yourself. — location: 2824 ^ref-8382
Mr. Customer, it’s been such a pleasure working with you. If you know anyone who’s in a similar situation to yourself, we’d love you to give them one of these gift cards which entitles them to $100 off their first consultation with us. One of the reasons we’re able to keep the cost of our service down is because we get a lot of our business through referrals from people like you. — location: 2827 ^ref-3928
In first aid training, they teach you to give specific instructions to specific people in a crowd. They teach you not to call out “somebody call an ambulance” or “somebody get a blanket.” As we’ve already established, “somebody” is somebody else. Instead, they teach you to make eye contact, point to a specific person and give them specific instructions. You point directly at the man with the green hat, and you say, “You, call an ambulance.” You point at the woman in the yellow jumper and say, “You, get a blanket.” — location: 2865 ^ref-49477
Finding other complementary businesses that your customer deals with before they deal with you can help you uncover untapped profits in your business. — location: 2911 ^ref-19763
a brand is the personality of a business. — location: 2956 ^ref-36605
the best form of brand building is selling. — location: 2970 ^ref-53940
The things in your business that cause customers to figuratively or literally “cross the road” to buy from you are your brand equity. — location: 2977 ^ref-2652
focusing on sales and then turning your customers into a tribe of raving fans. — location: 2984 ^ref-49424
knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing. — location: 2999 ^ref-48086
Successful entrepreneurs have a bias for action, implement quickly and course correct along the way. — location: 3005 ^ref-32928
You have only twenty-four hours a day, so the only way you can get more achieved in a day is by using other people’s time. — location: 3009 ^ref-59318
As entrepreneurs, we only get paid for bringing value to the market—not for time. — location: 3023 ^ref-51092
The money we make as entrepreneurs is an automatic side effect of creating value. — location: 3028 ^ref-17655
The more times we create value by getting, retaining and satisfying a customer, the more we get paid. — location: 3034 ^ref-48592
It’s important to understand that marketing isn’t an event, it’s a process. — location: 3041 ^ref-21478
You need to constantly be pondering questions such as: What business do I need to be in? What technologies are coming that are going to disrupt my industry? How can I take advantage of the coming changes in technology rather than fight them? — location: 3090 ^ref-20123
no one knows how good your products or services are until after the sale. Before they buy, they only know how good your marketing is. Put simply, the best marketer wins every time. If you’re serious about business success, then now’s the time to take decisive action. — location: 3113 ^ref-37824
Marketing is the master skill of business. — location: 3119 ^ref-24264
Building a successful business enables you to live life on your own terms. You deserve business success and it is attainable for YOU. — location: 3124 ^ref-10898