Business Coaching

Power Parthenon Beats The Diving Board

Recently I was reviewing the Jay Abraham inspired articles I had written and I was astonished to see that I hadn't written about the Power Parthenon of geometric business growth.

I have covered the strategy of preeminence, funnel vision, greatest headlines and adapted the three ways to grow a business model, but all my mentions of the Power Parthenon were in passing when I was talking about something else or someone else.

According to Jay Abraham, too many businesses work on the principle of Diving Board Marketing where they get the majority of their business from just one source.

 

So in this case I have used the example of a business depending on the Internet for attracting leads but it could be a direct sales force, it could direct mail, telemarketing, referrals or many others.

And when times are good, this model can provide a stable business unless something happens. So for the Internet example, it could be that Google changes the algorithm and the website falls from the cherished number one position for the main keywords to position sixteen and traffic falls by 95% immediately. It could be that the main sales person is poached by your main competitor after a double your money offer.

Or it can be that your own initiatives cause your business to behave unpredictably and as I explained in the beer game, sudden change can produce a series of difficulties, particularly when times are uncertain anyway.

What happens when sales are slow. It is so tempting that you have special promotions to make your sales numbers for the quarter, would you?

"Buy now and save 10% of the price."

Your regular customers take advantage, just as you would want and buy but next month they don't need to buy again. You have introduced a shock to your system and you create supply problems and excess costs.

Whatever the cause, the business is fundamentally unstable and vulnerable to shocks.

But when you build a Power Parthenon by adding multiple lead generation sources, the business becomes much stronger and you start Jay's concept of geometric business growth by adding another 20% from direct mail, 30% from telemarketing...

 

Each pillar of lead generation techniques makes the business stronger and while I have only included five pillars to make it easy to draw, you can have many more.

Jay Conrad Levinson of Guerrilla Marketing has identified 200 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons that you can use and improve. Not all of them will be suitable but many of them could be used to bring you extra business.

The Power Parthenon doesn't stop at this first level.

Remember the idea of Jay Abraham's Three Ways To Grow A Business Model:

1. More customers, who
   
2. Spend more, and
   
3. Buy more often
   

Each of the pillars can be used for difference purposes and in different ways.

I have just added extra legs for each of the three ways to grow but you may have multiple methods to achieve these objectives only limited by your time, money, energy and imagination.

Resources To Help Implement The Power Parthenon

The Power Parthenon is one of the ideas covered in Jay Abraham's great audio program from Nightingale Conant - Mastermind Marketing System - follow the link to hear sample snippets.

Scott Hallman and the Small Business Growth Club provide a systematised basis to win more customers and sell more, more often.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association (30 day free trial) includes six hours of audios of Jay Conrad Levinson explaining all 200 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons and the Guerrilla Marketing Toolkit is an excellent way to implement the Guerrilla Marketing concepts. Ideas are great, action produces the money.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Marketing In A Recession

I will be writing a series of blogs about ways that you need to up your game when trading in a recession over the next month or so.

This will effectively be designed as an entry point for the articles designed to help you to build a stronger business in these tough times, both to point your attention at new articles and also to highlight existing articles that now have a renewed relevance and importance.

These ideas can stop you "getting in to trouble" in the expected recession or help you to recover although, depending on the severity of the issues you may need specialist Business Turnaround advice.

I am starting with a couple of articles that will have a strong visual element in them to help increase the impact.

The first is from the ideas of Jay Abraham will contrast the ideas of using multiple lead generation sources to attract new customers and clients rather than relying on a few.

Power Parthenon Beats The Diving Board

The second builds strongly on Jay Abraham's ideas and concepts for finding hidden profits in a business by turning attention away from the attraction of new customers towards strengthening the relationship and the lifetime value of a customer. But it is John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing who developed the analogy of Hourglass Marketing.

Hourglass Marketing: Building Your Back End

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs       

Predictably Irrational - Bronze beats Silver Medal

Sounds crazy doesn't it but research by Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational says:
The silver medalist is disappointed because the natural comparison is with the winner of the gold medal.

The bronze medalist is delighted because the natural comparison is with the fourth placed and the people further behind and feels delighted to have won a medal.

There is an excellent 45 minute interview with Dan Ariely on the Rich Schefren blog the which can be downloaded.

It gives plenty of examples about how this can be used for the marketers advantage.

I have talked about this one before but if you offer a lower priced item and a higher priced item, more people will choose the lower priced product.

Add a third even more expensive product and suddenly, the value comparison is raised and more people start selecting the middle item.

It really is a great interview and it's free to download without any sign-up.

You can also lean more from Dan Ariely's website and even volunteer to take part in future experiments and as an incentive receive the inside track on the results. I have signed up and this looks to be another book I will be buying.

As always with effective marketing to the emotions and the unconscious minds and any form of mind control, it can be used for good to help people make the right decision for them (remember Jay Abraham's saying that "people are silently begging to be led") or manipulated into purchasing self-serving offers from the marketer.

As Mark Joyner decided when he re-released his book Mind Control Marketing, the best way to protect yourself is to know about these techniques so that you can be aware of when they may be carrying an inappropriate weight of influence.

Here are some of Dan Ariely's videos which help explain the concepts of Predictably Irrational.

Video 1 - Introduction - experiments in pain

Video 2 - Truth about relativity

 

Fascinating and I will be adding the extra videos but I must press on.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Marketing Plan In Seven Sentences

I want to share with you one of the key fundamentals of Guerrilla Marketing, the small business marketing ideas that create high impact results from low and no cost marketing weapons.

Why You Need A Marketing Plan

You need a marketing plan to help you to coordinate the most important function of your business - how you attract and satisfy your customers so successfully that they come back for more.

It helps you to gain clarity of what you want and what needs to be done.

There is a saying "proper preparation prevents particularly poor performance" and the proper preparation means putting your plan together, thinking through what you want to want to happen and the actions you need to be taking.          

What You Don't Need From A Marketing Plan

You don't want a marketing plan that takes days to produce and is never used.

You don't want a marketing plan that costs you a fortune but never produces any benefits.

You don't want a 200 page marketing plan that takes hours to review.

You want a marketing plan that is to the point, quick to write, clear on what needs to be done and is quick to review.

What you need is:

The Seven Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan

I will introduce the idea and then look at each sentence in more detail.

1. The purpose of marketing
    
   
2. How you will achieve this purpose – your competitive advantage and benefits of your service
    
3. Your target markets
    
4. The marketing weapons you will use
    
5. Your niche or position
    
6. The identity of your business
    
7. Your marketing budget
   

The beauty of the Seven Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan is that the idea works for:

1. Your entire business
    
   
2. Individual products
    
   
3. Individual product campaigns

You write to the level of detail you need to work with but the beauty is that you can build a hierarchy of marketing plans which each level up the hierarchy creating the boundaries or scope of the marketing project and each level further down presenting the clear detailed guidance on how success will be achieved in a particular campaign or using one of the two hundred guerrilla marketing weapons.

Used By Procter & Gamble

This is such a powerful technique that it has been adopted by many of the Silicon Valley IT success stories that Jay Conrad Levinson taught at the University of California but even more impressivelu, it is used by marketing giants Procter & Gamble - pwners of brands as well established as these listed in Wikipedia.

Example of Applying the Seven Step Guerrilla Marketing Plan

I will work through the plan and look at applying the example to the same firm of accountants as I used in Yellow Pages Advertising Mistakes.

The Purpose Of Your Marketing

The first sentence of the Seven Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan is:

What specific action do you want prospects to do and why.

In the example the accountant may say "I want people to call for a free 20 minute tax assessment and consultation."

This then becomes the focus of what we are selling in the marketing messages. The aim is not to rush to convert the prospect into a client but to give them an easy, low risk first step.

It is the same logic as dating and why men ask a girl out for lunch before moving on to dinner and eventually possibly leading to marriage. The first step is not threatening and therefore doesn't create the instant defensive reaction of "No thanks."

How You Will Achieve This Purpose

The second sentence of the Seven Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan is:

How will you achieve this purpose? How will you persuade prospective customers to act in the way you want?

This looks at why they should respond - this is the benefits they will receive from responding to your marketing message. It is the "if I do what you want, what's in it for me."

In the accountant's example the 20 minute assessment is a commitment but what small business owner has a spare twenty minutes. The truth is that they have to make time so you have to give them reasons.

Eg In the free tax assessment we will examine the opportunities available to benefit from ten proven ideas for reducing the overall tax paid by an owner-manager.

Your target markets

The third sentence in the Seven Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan tells you to define your target market.

Exactly what type of prospective clients will you be targeting your marketing towards. This is important for several reasons:

a) you probably can't afford to target everybody and even if you can, repetition is such a powerful multiplier of marketing results that you are better off sending the same basic message ten times to one tenth of the potential market than just telling them about it once.

I explained this in my detail in my common marketing mistake image advertising article by showing how attitudes gradually change to a market message.

b) you want to be choosey about who you allow to be clients. Michael Port talks about this in his red velvet rope policy.

So back to the example, the accountants may choose to target small business owners in the licensing trade within a ten mile radius of the centre of Birmingham. That is specific and it allows them to build up a speciality.

The Marketing Weapons To Use

The fourth sentence in the Seven Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan asks you to select your tactics.

Guerrilla Marketing talks about individual marketing weapons that you can use to promote your business so this is where you would choose what you will do for this promotion.

So back to the example of the accountants

Initial contact will be made by direct mail ( a series of five consecutive letters three weeks apart)

One to one telephone consultation for 20 minutes

Follow up through

a) Letter thanking them for the opportunity and outlining the ten tips

b) Second letter two months before the end of the tax year

c) Invitation to the "new employee tax rules teleseminar or presentation"

But the accountant need not stop there.

What about printing details of the free tax consultation on the back of the business card which is given out at networking events?

What about talking to their existing clients and agreeing an active referral system where the client can give their qualifying clients and friends the "free gift" of a 20 minute tax consultation?

Do you start seeing how powerful Guerrilla Marketing can be?

Your Niche and Position

The fifth sentence in the marketing plan asks you to clarify you niche position.

What is your place in the market and how would clients describe you to others and this will be consistent throughout the hierarchy of marketing plans.

So in the example, it would be a central Birmingham based firm of chartered accountants specialising in consumer service businesses.

The Identity Of Your Business

The penultimate sentence in the marketing plan asks you to clarify the promise your brand makes to prospective customers and keeps with regular customers.

Some marketing talks about creating an image, an illusion of what you want your customers to think.

Guerrilla marketing says that is nonsense. Because the aim is to create a long term customer you can't market that way. In Guerrilla Marketing image is seen as a false representation so the marketing plan asks you to specify your real identity that you will project? This again will be consistent throughout your marketing plans.

So for the accountant, the identity is a fast, responsive service committed to helping clients to minimise their tax bills legally.

That makes it clear that the accountant is not going to resort to any of the shady tricks which may cause big problems with the taxman and indicates that the accountant will have issues with any client who tries illegal tax evasion techniques.

Your Marketing Budget

The final sentence in the Seven Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan is concerned with money.

How much are you going to spend to attract clients?

The pot of cash for marketing isn't unlimited so specify how much you will spend on marketing either as:

1. A fixed amount
    
   
2. A percentage of your sales
    
   
3. A target amount per lead generated
    
   
4. A target amount per client acquired

Each has its advantages.

The fixed amount marketing budget imposes a budgetary discipline and encourages you to search for the biggest "bang per buck". Knowing that you are only going to spend £10,000 on marketing, encourages you to weight up your options and decide whether that £800 for the Yellow Pages advertisement should be better spent on four series of letters to the 200 top prospects.

The percentage of target sales budget allows your marketing expenditure to continue to grow as the business grows which means that you can have a bigger, more extensive website, more expensive looking brochures, organise an event to thank customers and so many other ways to attract new customers and strengthen the relationship with existing customers. This is the version of the budget that I have heard Jay Levinson recommend although I am not so sure.

The target amount per lead generated is easy to calculate and forms a bridge between your marketing process inputs (whatever the activities are) and your results.

The target amount per new client is the next logical extension which also includes your ability to convert leads into clients and encourages you to focus your attention both on reducing cost per lead and increasing conversion rates.

The average cost of acquiring a client emphasises the importance of finding ways to increase your customer lifetime value.

So to return to my example for the accountant, the budget can be set at £10,000 with a target client acquisition cost of £150 including allowance for the 20 minute consultation. Alternatively the accountant could set a target result of £100,000 from the campaign and set the budget at 10%.

Conclusion - The Seven Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan

As you can see, the seven sentence guerrilla marketing plan is a thorough reflection on what you want to achieve with your marketing and how you are going to do it.

The beauty of it is that as you become more familiar, it is very quick to write because it doesn't include any of the superfluous information you could include and it is quick to review because it is so short and will fit on one page.

Even better, it works because it is so focused on what you want, why customers will take action and how it all happens.

Learning More About Guerrilla Marketing

If you believe that you would benefit from one to one coaching and you are in the UK, then please contact me on 0121 554 4057. I am a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach. You can find out more details on my local Marketing Coaching West Midlands page.

If you are outside the UK then please search for a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach or contact Alexa Ronngren, the Global Guerrilla Marketing coach. Alexa specialises in adapting the Guerrilla marketing ideas across different cultures and is writing a series of articles on global marketing for this blog.

If you don't feel that you need a coach, then the Guerrilla Marketing Toolkit comes highly recommended. It is a joint venture between Jay Conrad Levinson and Mitch Meyerson, the creator of the Guerrilla Marketing Coaching Certification Program. It is excellent value for anyone wanting to implement the essentials of Guerrilla Marketing including the seven sentence Guerrilla Marketing plan.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association is also highly recommended.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach (and certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach)

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Yellow Pages Advertising Common Mistakes In Adverts

We received a new edition of our Yellow Pages at the weekend and I always spend some time looking at the Advertisements. Margaret think it's a sign that I am sad, I believe in shows my enduring interest in marketing.

Each year I see the same mistakes being made by the companies advertising in Yellow Pages and often hear comments from people that they have advertised in Yellow Pages but it hasn't worked.

Don't Advertise In Yellow Pages If Your Competitors Don't

It may look like a great opportunity and the Yellow Pages salespeople is sure to present it as a way for you to gain a competitive edge if you advertise.

Quite right too provided you can answer one critical question:

Do your prospective customers see Yellow Pages as a natural place to search for suppliers?

Do you sell a product where time is of the essence?

Plumbers, electricians, roof contractors do and you will see plenty of advertisements in those categories.

Do you sell a product where the Yellow Pages has a useful service of telling you the local addresses because you want to visit showrooms?

If you are looking for a new bathroom, kitchen or car, you could easily pick up the yellow pages and use it as a guide to drive around.

Do you sell a service that is normally bought by telephone?

Insurance brokers do and so do skip hire companies.

But otherwise use the Yellow Pages as a guide. If nobody is advertising it is because nobody can make it pay. Customers don't use the Yellow Pages often enough to justify the cost of an advertisement.

It is significant that in my edition of the Yellow Pages which covers central Birmingham (the UK's second largest city) there is only one very small advert from one of about forty Advertising Agencies.

For some the results are mixed. For example when I look at Accountants, perhaps 25% have some form of advertisement. So here the important message is if you are going to advertise, make sure you use an effective advert.

Avoid The Tombstone Advertisement

Here lies

John Smith & Co, Chartered Accountants

121 High Street

Every-town

Telephone 0121 *** ***

Does that encourage you to call John Smith & Co when all the competition are competing for attention? Clearly not unless being in Every-town is important to you.

There are slightly more sophisticated adverts so John Smith & Co could have listed what they do:

Accounts preparation

Payroll preparation

Tax returns

Financial advice

Has that inspired you any more?

Isn't this effectively what all accountants do? It might give you a little bit more reassurance if you don't understand what you are buying but it doesn't motivate you to call.

So what would encourage you to call an accountant?

Explaining the benefits might.

Pay Less Tax

There are many ways to reduce the tax you pay easily and legally
but unfortunately many entrepreneurs don't know about these
allowances, incentives and loop-holes.

Call 0121 xxx xxxx for a free assessment of
how much tax we can save you

Does that motivate you?

In Yellow Pages advertising, your objective is to sell the reader on the idea of calling you rather than your competitors so what do your customers want and why are you different.

You don't have to sell the generic product, the prospective customer is looking in the category already so has an interest.

You don't have to sell your product or service, just sell the telephone call and get the prospect into your sales funnel.

Don't Make Your Advertisement Difficult To Read

Watch the size of your print. You are not saving money by cramming as many words onto your small advert as you can but you make it so small that you need 2020 vision to read it.

Be very careful with reverse type. It can attract attention but the letters need to be clear and bold.

Watch your colour contrasts. Many men suffer from colour blindness which makes it difficult to distinguish between red and green.

Even people with good sight will struggle if your colours are too similar. Dark blue letters on a black background will be difficult, so will white letters on a yellow background.

If you use a photograph or an image as your background, make sure that your words can be easily read.

Don't Miss Out The Essentials

Telephone number, website, address (people will be looking for local suppliers if they use the Yellow Pages).

Make sure that the telephone number is answered. You don't want people to call and you miss it so as a bare minimum have a voice-mail service but it is much nicer if the telephone is answered by a real person with a professional manner.

Don't Forget Purchase Reassurance

Calling a name in the Yellow Pages is a step into the unknown so if you are in an industry where there are cowboys, then provide reassurance

Memberships of trade associations

Years in business

Any guarantee you have

Don't Forget To Test

Traditional advertising is under pressure with costs increasing and returns reducing as the power of the Internet continues to grow.

Make sure that you test your Yellow Pages advertisement.

There are ways to try to test an advert before it is placed but it is not possible to do it exactly because the Yellow Pages provides a direct comparison against competitors at the time the prospective customer is thinking about buying.

But it is particularly important to test the success of the advert when it is placed by:

• Using a unique telephone number - it costs a bit but it gives you the most accurate results.
• Asking the prospect where they had learned of your name.
  
• Using an advertising reference that is unique to the advert - this is particularly effective if the prospect has an incentive to tell you to get an extra bonus or discount.
  

Conclusion

Yellow Pages is an important source of leads for many different types of local business but please do check the current edition before you are persuaded to try an advert.

Many entrepreneurs and owners of small businesses tell me that they tried a Yellow Pages advertisement when they first started but it didn't work.

They must have made one of these common mistakes in Yellow Pages advertising.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Jump start your small business marketing with the Guerrilla Marketing Toolkit

Guerrilla Marketing - A WebUrbanist View

I use the Google Alerts system extensively to help me keep up-to-date with what is happening on the web and as a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach, one of the phrases I watch is Guerrilla Marketing.

A couple of weeks ago the WebUrbanist blog came to my attention as it was starting an eight part examination of Guerrilla Marketing. I wasn't sure where it was going so I have held back but as I write this, part 7 has now been published.

It seems that any wacky marketing campaign is being dismissed as Guerrilla Marketing and whilst the marketers may have been using their imagination, there is much more to Guerrilla Marketing than being unique, quirky or even strange. Some of these associations on the media with stupid ideas do not do the more serious Guerrilla Marketing practitioners any favours at all.

Fortunately WebUrbanist is doing a general review and has some great examples of some effective and not so effective Guerrilla Marketing campaigns.

Part 1 - The History of Guerrilla Marketing

Part 2 - The Origins & Evolution of Guerrilla Marketing

Part 3 - Major Corporations Go For Guerrilla Marketing 

Part 4 - Guerrilla Marketing versus Viral Marketing

Part 5 - Guerrilla Marketing for Social Causes

Part 6 - Ten Different Types of Guerrilla Marketing

Part 7 - Is Guerrilla Marketing Right For You

Part 8 - The Future of Guerrilla Marketing

So what did you think?

It's a great blog and so very bright, dramatic and colourful and Delana has put together a great series on Guerrilla Marketing.

As I mentioned in my comment on the last posting, the novel attention grabbing tactics are only the beginning although it is the most newsworthy. True Guerrilla Marketing focuses on consistent and regular follow-up to build long term, mutually beneficial relationships.

A Guerrilla Marketer knows that the opportunities can't be wasted. If it doesn't lead to a sale or only a one-time sale, a golden chance has been wasted so there is a much more practical side to Guerrilla Marketing.

To find out how to use Guerrilla Marketing to make more money you have to keep reading my blog or enroll yourself on a Guerrilla Marketing program. The Guerrilla Marketing Jumpstart is excellent.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association is also highly recommended.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

How To Increase Profits Quickly & Easily

Marketing guru Jay Abraham is famous for many ideas and innovations but one of the most powerful is his concept of stripping down the complexities of business growth into three components:

1. Increase the number of customers
    
2. Increase the value of each transaction
    
3. Increase the number of times an average customer buys per year

If sales turnover equals £840,000 per annum, it can be broken down into:

• 200 customers
• who spend  on average £700 per transaction
• and buy six times per year.

200 x 700 x 6 = £840,000

So simple but so powerful because it:

a) breaks the focus on increasing sales by attracting new customers. The idea of selling more to existing customers is opened up and the success of Jay Abraham and his followers has shown that most companies do not maximise their opportunity with existing customers.

b) the model creates exponential, geometric growth. Increasing each factor by 10% generates 33% total growth. Increasing the three drivers of growth by 20% each creates 72.8% growth.

Adapting The Model To Increase Profit

Often higher turnover translates directly into higher profit but because times are tough I want to adapt Jay Abraham's model to show you how you can increase profits quickly and easily.

My revised profit increase model is:

1. Increase the number of customers
    
   
2. Increase the average profit margin of each transaction
    
   
3. Increase the number of times the customers buy on average in the year
    
   
4. Reduce the overhead costs
   

So the first three when multiplied together create Total Margin which becomes Profit when Overhead costs are deducted.

Reducing Overhead Costs

The quickest wins and boost to profit can be to cut your overhead costs.

If your average margin is 25%, then to increase profit by £1,000 you can either increase your sales by £4,000 (to create an extra £1,000 margin) or reduce overheads directly by £1,000.

I discussed cost cutting in  considerable detail in my day 2 review of the 7 Day Business Turnaround Kit - see cost cutting in your business turnaround for more details

The essence is that you need to:

1. Cut any costs which exceed the value/benefit they create.
     
   
2. Review your other costs to make sure that you are getting as much "bank for your buck" as you should. This includes reviewing employees - their role may be necessary but you may have some under-performing in the role. See Difficult Decisions Made  Easier for details of Brian Tracy's technique called zero based think.
   

Increasing Your Margin

The Jay Abraham formula is simple and its implications for increasing profits quickly and easily is clear.

Focus on your existing customers and clients and implement techniques to persuade them to buy more and to buy more often. Then when your clients are receiving an outstanding service from you, tap them for referrals. This is the method that Jay Abraham has used to devastating success throughout his stellar career.

The problem is that Jay's techniques are deceptively simple and that has caused followers to struggle with his ideas. This is why I want to introduce you to Scott Hallman's Small Business Growth Club and in particular the Increase Profits work stream.

Scott Hallman & the Small Business Growth Club

Scott is a keen student of Jay Abraham and has been since 1992 when he attended a three day $5,000 course. Since then Scott Hallman has become a very successful entrepreneur and is now probably the leading business coach in the world who still works with clients charging $1,250 per hour. Scott has also presented on stage to Jay Abraham's clients and he is recognised at the master of implementation.

What Scott has done is take the Jay Abraham ideas and turn them into an easy-to-implement system. A step-by-step guide to increasing profits and the six modules I have worked through so far are brilliant in the way Scott explains the concepts, reveals the opportunities with a host of examples across a wide range of industries and then leads you by the nose through the implementation.

I just do not understand why the Small Business Growth Club is not famous throughout the world.

Increasing Margin With Scott Hallman

Here are the first six modules in the Small Business Growth Club - Increase Profit workstream:

1. How to Effortlessly Get Your Customers to Dramatically Increase their Average Purchase
   
   In this workshop Scott  gives you the detailed systems to increase the amount of up-selling and cross-selling you can do in your business, increasing the amount that customers spend.
    
   
2. Condition Your Customers to Purchase More Often
   
   Did you know that your customers may not buy as often as they want to from you. That's right they recognise that they benefit from buying from you but there busy lives and other distractions get in the way. As Scott Hallman explains, there are simple techniques to help your customers buy your products and services at their optimal purchase frequency.
    
   
3. 10 Ways to Increase Customers Retention by 50% or More
   
   There are two ways to increase the number of customers. The first is to attract more new customers, the second, which is often overlooked, is to reduce the number who stop buying from you. In the true style of a customer focused entrepreneur, the more you focus on making their buying experiences exceed their expectations and really deliver on the promised benefits, the more customers will want to keep buying.
    
   
4. How to Create "Active" Referral Systems to Double Your Referrals Effortlessly
   
   When you have introduced systems to stop or at least reduce the number of customers you lose, the next stage is to introduce active referral systems so that your happy customers are delighted to do both you and their family, friends and colleagues a favour by recommending your business.
    
   
5. Turn Your Customers in "Turbo-Customers"
   
   More advice on ways to persuade your current customers to buy more together with re-converting inactive customers and persistent follow up with unconverted prospects.
    
   
6. How to Double Your Sales Force Without Spending a Dime
   
   I don't know why but the next module I reviewed was out of order but this module on strategic alliances and third party endorsements is still very relevant to earning profits quickly from current customers and prospects because it gives you a quick way to increase your product offerings. Even more powerful is that it opens up the opportunity for you to be recommended to many of your target customers by people they already trust.
   

You can see how well these training modules fit in with Jay Abraham's three ways to grow a business model so as a big Jay fan, you can see why I am so impressed with how Scott Hallman has taken these ideas and each profit improvement strategy into a step by step guide.

The Master Of Implementation

Scott Hallman is known as the master of implementation because he makes things simple to do and he takes away the overwhelm factor.

If you have ever tried to implement a strategy like, for example the first one designed to increase purchase values. You may have read about the ideas of cross-selling and up-selling and hopefully you have paid attention to your own experiences as a buyer and seen how gently and beneficially people introduce opportunities to get more benefit for an increase in purchase value.

But then when you sit down to try to do it in your business, it is difficult to know where to start. You sell so many products and there are so many options.

The "do you want fries with that?" question is easy for the McDonald's kids to ask but what if you don't have the ubiquitous fries? What can you do?

And this is where problems set in.

As soon as you hit a doubt or difficulty, the impetus is lost. You put the cross-selling and up-selling idea to one side while you "think about it".

A week goes buy but there is no answer. Then a month. Then it's three months since you read about the ideas and you've either forgotten about it or you've decided that you don't have cross-selling or up-selling opportunities in your business.

What a Waste! It Doesn't Have To Be Like This.

If you allow this to happen you've wasted your time and effort and even more importantly, you've wasted the opportunity for easy extra profits that a well constructed up-selling and cross-selling strategy can provide.

But it doesn't have to be like that.

Scott Hallman teaches you the Power Of One™ which means that you don't make the common mistake of trying to do too much and failing. Instead you pick one attractive opportunity and focus your attention on making it work and only then, do you roll out the idea across multiple products. 

How To Increase Profits Quickly & Easily

Do you get the impression I like Scott Hallman's Small Business Growth Club?

If so you are wrong. I love it.

Manufacturing sector or service sector, distribution or retail trades, it is a great product and it is currently available at a great price. You see these techniques being used in Internet marketing but Scott doesn't really operate in the Internet world.

The Small Business Growth Club is for real businesses with real products and services who want to make some real money.

The only downside I have is the website - Small Business Growth Club.

I think that first time visitors find it difficult to navigate around and they become confused and lost. I have told Scott this and I hope it improves. Just head over to Take the tour and follow it through then join when you have seen enough.

If you do need or want to increase profits quickly and easily and you are prepared to put in the effort to learn and implement, then you can't go wrong with the Small Business Growth Club

It is available for a fantastic price that represents only a few minutes of Scott talking to you one-to-one. For less than a dollar a day, you can learn the secrets of success AND how to implement them.

Scott's coaches can provide help and assistance if you have any queries for a small fee and if you are in the UK, I would love to help you implement these ideas.

It's your move now, the website is Small Business Growth Club

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Power Of Emotional Marketing At Work

It is often said that people buy because of emotional reasons and then justify the purchase decision to themselves rationally and for many purchases it is true.

You don't need (logical) but you want (emotional) and sometimes you want with an overwhelming passion that means that you have a compulsion to buy despite yourself.

I am fascinated by this entire topic of marketing to the emotions and how it can be used for the purposes of good but also how people can and need to be protected from marketing manipulation for purposes of the seller's self interest.

There are words and emotional triggers that pull us into written copy or the salesman's pitch and make us want to find out more and then persuade us to buy.

In "All Marketers Are Liars", top author and marketer Seth Godin argued that it is a conspiracy to which we are willing participants. We want the marketing message to be so compelling that it gives us the ammunition to justify buying something we want, both to ourselves and to other people.

Joe Vitale and Hypnotic Writing

One of the most famous copywriters and practitioners of persuasion and hypnotic techniques is Dr Joe Vitale (you may remember him from The Secret film which advocated the law of attraction).

Joe Vitale has written a long list of books which look at hypnotic marketing and persuasion techniques and he has recently released Hypnotic Marketing 2.0.

To be honest I have been trying to cut down on the information products I buy. I have too large a backlog of items waiting for review and as my blog gets bigger and more influential, I am being offered more and more items free of charge for me to cast my eye over and give it the thumbs up or down.

Emotional Marketing & The Link To My Credit Card

So I have watched the first two emails roll in promoting Hypnotic Marketing and I chose to ignore them but the third one came this morning, hit one of my buying buttons so with my resistance broken, I whipped out my credit card, bought and while I am writing this, a host of goodies are bing downloaded to my computer.

Warning - Hypnotic Marketing At Work

As always these launches are interesting to watch so I thought that I would repeat the sequences of emails. You have been warned so don't blame me if your credit card shoots out of your wallet faster than a speeding bullet.

Hypnotic Marketing Email 1 - What Can IT Be?

He's being quiet about IT.

The only information that we can get out of him is that IT is big and reaches far beyond our normal ways of thinking.

And that IT will be revealed this Friday, May 30th.

The person behind "IT" is Dr. Joe Vitale.

We have learned that something profound happened to him on a Sunday afternoon recently shortly after he left his house and went for a walk.

We've also learned that this "IT", as he is referring to it for now, has made a dramatic impact on him and the few people he's shared his story with.

And Dr. Vitale has proof that IT exists.

In an email, Joe mentioned that he snapped two photos - photos that he will be sharing with the world on May 30th.

We hope to find out additional information for you before Friday - so stay tuned.

Whatever this is - it's big enough for him to put his entire reputation on the line.

All I know is IT is all going down at:

What is it?

To Your Success,

Paul Simister

PS:  There's a couple of hints posted at this page, but I don't think any of us are going to guess from that!

Circles...

& Flowers?

HUH??

What is it?

First Hypnotic Marketing Email Review and Comments

This is clearly a curiosity play designed to make you want to know more.

What is it that makes a man as famous and successful as Joe Vitale prepared to "put his entire reputation on the line".

What is it that has had a dramatic effect on him and the people he has shared the idea with?

I didn't know but for me personally, the email made little impact.

I respect Joe Vitale, I've read his books and subscribed to the Hypnotic Gold newsletter but I don't care about him and this first email failed to excite me and it certainly didn't answer the "what's in it for me" question.

Hypnotic Marketing Email 2 - ABC News I Told You IT was Big

Since we sent the email yesterday about what Dr. Joe Vitale will be revealing this Friday, May 30th, we've been slammed by emails, support tickets, and calls from people trying to guess what "IT" is.

As you can imagine, we have been doing everything we can to obtain more information from one of our contacts who does know the full story of what is going on here.

Most of the updates are found on:

What is IT?

However, we did learn an additional piece of information that we have been told must not be published onto any website [update - this is now on the Hypnotic Marketing website].

So we decided to share this new information with you, right here... right now... in this email.

It seems that Joe is not the only person behind "IT" like we had previously thought.

We have been told that Joe has been referring to a "Miss W" a lot lately.  The story is that after Joe snapped the photos, he went back into his house and searched the Internet for hours for someone that he could talk to about IT".

The search led him to a "Miss W".  Our contact also mentioned that Miss W. has some sort of connection with ABC News!

We did some research ourselves and may have found something SHOCKING - which would revel what "IT" is before Joe does on Friday.

We may be onto something here, and we hope that we'll find out the answer to a question we asked our contact earlier today.

If we are right, Dr. Joe Vitale could become the most well-known name in the entire world within the next 72 hours.

We're not kidding here.

And if we are right... we hope that Joe has moved to a secure location outside of Texas.

There would be so many news crews... so many cameras.... helicopters...

man, oh man...

Look - if you haven't already, make sure that you stay up to date on what is happening here.

What is IT?

If we are right about our assumption, we could possibly expose everything (even before Joe does on Friday) to you and everyone else on the Hypnotic Marketing update list. 

So make sure you're on there.

Stay tuned.  This could get very interesting.

To Your Success,

Paul Simister

Second Hypnotic Email Review & Comments

This email starts with an appeal to your instinct to rely on social proof.

If other people are interested and think it is good, it must be good.

It's why you can stand in the middle of a city and start looking up at the top of a building and other people will join you to see what is so interesting. A sizable crowd can build up quite quickly.

It's why if you are in a strange city and you need dinner and the first restaurant has only one table occupied and the next one looks three quarters full, you will invariably choose the popular restaurant.

It then continues to build on the curiosity theme.

We still still don't know what IT is and now we have the mysterious Miss W to consider.

Unfortunately the email still didn't arouse my curiosity and I didn't have any interest to discover more about IT or Miss W despite the fact that I am an Hypnotic Marketing affiliate.

It was working on some people though.

Although I wasn't doing anything I was hearing the "cha-ching" as my affiliate commissions started rolling in for people who I had introduced to Hypnotic Marketing and Nitro Marketing in the past.

Now this did start piquing my curiosity and made me think how great affiliate marketing si when you get paid and you haven't done anything at all.

So far I have earned a three figure income from sales of Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 and until this today when I received email 4, bought and started writing this blog posting, I had not done a thing.

I love affiliate marketing when it is this easy.

Hypnotic Marketing Email 3 - New Bonus Added To Hypnotic Marketing 2.0!

I'm sure by now you've heard about the tremendous reception that Dr. Joe Vitale has received from the marketing community on his latest best-selling product: Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

And with good reason - this has single handedly turned the "Web 2.0" movement on it's ear by...

Well, let me start back at the beginning:

The launch of the new Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 marks the first significant change to Dr. Joe Vitale's original Hypnotic Marketing Formula in 9 years.  For almost a decade, Hypnotic Marketing has been a proven and successful 3-step marketing formula that thousands of marketers use to explode their business and bank accounts.

However, after a "big idea" landed in Dr. Vitale's mind during an afternoon walk, he realized that Social Media Marketing now presents the largest marketing opportunity to hit the Internet in years.

And Dr. Vitale is no stranger to Social Media Marketing success.  He saw the raw power first-hand of what Social Media can do to drive traffic to his website when over 20,000 unique visitors poured into his website after one small Social Media promotion.

Because Dr. Vitale recognized the marketing opportunities that Social Media Marketing presents, for the first time ever, he has added a new fourth step to the Hypnotic Marketing Formula.

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 now combines the proven Hypnotic Marketing Formula with the powerful marketing opportunities that Social Media Marketing presents.

Discover Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

Yes, the instant feedback on Dr. Joe Vitale's new Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 has been incredible (he's smashed many sales records)

And today, we are making a huge announcement which also addresses one of the questions we
received:

"I love the new hypnotic marketing product, and I am trying to find more ways I can make my blogs more "hypnotic".  Do you happen to have any suggestions?"  -- M.P.

Yes - we do!

Because we want to make sure that you have the best of the best when it comes to Social Media Hypnotic Marketing, we asked Dr. Vitale if he could provide some additional information on 'Hypnotic' Blogging.

We were expecting a page or two that we could provide everyone, but were blown away at what we just received....

Dr. Vitale wants to "give back" to those of you who took advantage of the special offer found on:

Discover Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

So for those of you who have already ordered, and for a limited time, also for those who are going to place their order right now for Hypnotic Marketing 2.0, there is a brand new limited time bonus...

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 now includes Dr. Vitale's exclusive full Hypnotic Blogging product - at no additional cost!

Hypnotic Blogging is packed with information and answers questions like:

- What blog makes $40,000 a month after just a year and a half?

- What is a "lifestyle blog"?

- How you can train Google to index your blog daily?

- How do I use "karmic marketing" to get other bloggers to send you tons of traffic?

- What should you do when you're afraid to take action?

Joe interviewed someone who retired at the age of 37 and decided to become a full-time blogger.  This interview ROCKS and will really change the way you think about blogging.

Hypnotic Blogging is now available as an incredible bonus to Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 -- but not for long.

Go to:

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

To Your Success,

Paul Simister

P.S... Remember, time is running out to save money and secure your copy of Hypnotic marketing 2.0 plus all of the incredible bonuses.  And remember, HM 2.0 now includes "Hypnotic Blogging" as another brand new bonus!  But not for long:

Third Hypnotic Email Review & Comments

Now we are beginning to talk as we are starting to see the "what's in it for me" answered in sufficient detail for me to click over and take a look at Hypnotic Marketing 2.0.

We also have a scarcity play with the introduction of Hypnotic Blogging as an extra bonus for a limited time only. Buy now or lose it forever?

Despite the fact that I am a blogger who certainly likes the idea of making $40,000 per month I clicked but didn't buy.

Fourth Hypnotic Marketing Email - Did Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 Make You Cry? 

Cry?

We hope not.

Buy?

Thousands already have.

The secret?

Emotion.

Throughout the promotion of Hypnotic Marketing 2.0, it was emotion that helped slingshot HM2.0 to the top - becoming Joe's best-selling product ever.

Hidden deep within the emails and sales letter were traces of techniques that Joe teaches in his ebook, "Emotional Selling Tools".

See if you can spot 3 of them:

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

"Emotional Selling Tools" has been a secret weapon many marketers refer back to often to really get into the heads of their potential customers.

In fact, Joe uncovered 155 different ways to trigger consumers into making an emotional purchase.

155 different ways...

Most websites fail to use just one of these 155...

And when it comes to Social Media Marketing, emotional selling is rarely used.

Very few understand the true power of what emotional selling can do for their business.

In fact, for the last year, even if someone like you wanted to get a hold of "Emotional Selling Tools", it was impossible.

It's been off of the market.

And it's still off the market today.

However, for the first time in more than a year, "Emotional Selling Tools" is now being made available to the public.

But there's one small catch.

You need to own Hypnotic Marketing 2.0.

If you already own Hypnotic Marketing 2.0, be sure to log into your members area and refresh the page.  You'll notice that there is a brand new link to download Joe's book, "Emotional Selling Tools"!

For those of you who have not ordered Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 yet... here's your chance to claim your copy of "Emotional Selling Tools", plus Hypnotic Marketing 2.0, PLUS all of the bonuses.

The "Emotional Selling Tools" book is worth the small investment of Hypnotic Marketing 2.0
alone!

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0


Remember, you'll not only get Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 and all of the bonuses you'll find on:

... but you will also get two unadvertised bonuses:

1. Emotional Selling Tools

2. Hypnotic Blogging

This has become a massive course for Hypnotic Social Media Marketing that most other marketers would charge at least $597 for.

People still can't believe that we haven't raised the price of HM 2.0.

But we're going to VERY soon...

Hurry...  Go to:

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

To Your Success,

Paul Simister

P.S... By combining everything you'll learn in HM 2.0, Hypnotic Blogging, and Emotional Selling Tools, you will be well on your way to becoming a true social media marketing expert for your business.

Your competitors will have no idea what hit them!  But you'll know....

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

Review of Hypnotic Marketing Email 4.0

Ok this is the one that got me because it pressed one of my emotional triggers - the desire to know more about emotional triggers.

Ironic really but it worked.

I clicked on the website, shot down to the bottom, saw the low price ($27) and bought

I didn't read the sales copy although I have taken a PDF copy to read at my leisure. In my view it always pays to study great sales copy and I am sure that Joe Vitale has laced the sales letter with all kinds of examples of Hypnotic Marketing and emotional triggers.

Since then I have been busy downloading all the goodies and there really are a lot on offer.

It's too early to say just how good the material is but I wasn't expecting a man of Joe Vitale's stellar reputation to be giving so much for such a low price.

Take a look at Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 for yourself and do yourself a favour. Grab your copy before the price increases and learn how to put the power of emotional marketing to work for yourself.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Common Marketing Mistakes Part 4 - Ignoring Customers, No Referral System

This is part 4 of my Common Marketing Mistakes series of articles inspired by Jay Abraham.

So far I have covered six mistakes (and I've provided the links to take you straight to the three previous articles.)

1. Inadequate market research
   
2. No unique selling proposition or USP