The Mysterious JR s. Return of the Blogs CONTENTS

Transcription

1 The Mysterious JR s Return of the Blogs CONTENTS (1) Q&A With Jay (Part 107) (2) Q&A With Jay (Part 108) (3) Q&A With Jay (Part 109) (4) Q&A With Jay (Part 110) (5) How To REALLY Optimize Your Marketing (6) Q&A With Jay (Part 111) (7) Q&A With Jay (Part 112) (8) Q&A With Jay (Part 113) (9) Q&A With Jay (Part 114) (10) Q&A With Jay (Part 115) (11) Q&A With Jay (Part 116) (12) Q&A With Jay (Part 117) (13) Q&A With Jay (Part 118) (14) Q&A With Jay (Part 119) (15) Q&A With Jay (Part 120) (16) Q&A With Jay (Part 121) (17) Q&A With Jay (Part 122) (18) Q&A With Jay (Part 123) (19) Q&A With Jay (Part 124) (20) Q&A With Jay (Part 125) (21) Q&A With Jay (Part 126) (22) Q&A With Jay (Part 127) (23) Q&A With Jay (Part 128) (24) Q&A With Jay (Part 129) (25) Q&A With Jay (Part 130) (26) Q&A With Jay (Part 131) (27) Q&A With Jay (Part 132) (28) Q&A With Jay (Part 133) (29) Q&A With Jay (Part 134) (30) Q&A With Jay (Part 135)

2 (31) Q&A With Jay (Part 136) (32) Q&A With Jay (Part 137) (33) Q&A With Jay (Part 138) (34) Q&A With Jay (Part 139) (35) Q&A With Jay (Part 140) (36) Q&A With Jay (Part 141) (37) Q&A With Jay (Part 142) (38) Q&A With Jay (Part 143) (39) Q&A With Jay (Part 144) (40) An Open Letter To Any Young Person Trying To Please Their Parents (41) Q&A With Jay (Part 145) (42) Q&A With Jay (Part 146)

3 Return of the Blogs #1 Q&A With Jay (Part 107) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: Our products and services work for several unrelated industries. How might my company leverage the current industry we serve to start helping serve other industries? I have a product that solves a specific problem for people. Who should I market it to? How do I offer a discount while still maintaining my margins? Q: Our products and services work for several unrelated industries. How might my company leverage the current industry we serve to start helping serve other industries? A: Go to the people you serve and say to them, You are in (name of industry). However, what we have found is that a surprisingly large number of our clients associate with, interact with, meet with, and collaborate with people in unrelated, but surprisingly relevant, industries. Based on how we have served you, we hope we have earned the right to ask this: When you interact with somebody in any industry that utilizes, depends on, or requires any of the products or services we offer, we hope you encourage them to talk to us about the challenge they are facing. We ve been successful in addressing some surprising challenges for a vast array of industries outside of yours. When you have connections, introduce us. We think it will be a service to them. Q: I have a product that solves a specific problem for people. Who should I market it to? A: Depending on the specific problem you solve for people, you can co-partner 3

4 with people who sell other, or related, products or services about the specific problem you solve. You can explain to them how people who have already bought from them in a non-recurring manner can buy your product too and it s a great way re-activate and re-monetize them. Further, you can explain how your product will be great for the people who have never bought from them but are prospects. Also, your product could be a lead generator for them or a self-liquidating product that gets them quality leads they can then sell more expensive products to. The idea here is to find people online and offline who sell to the people who have the problem your product solves, and make your product something they can add as an upsell, or a re-sell, or a packaged component, or a bonus, or as a lead generator that self-liquidates. Q: How do I offer a discount while still maintaining my margins? A: If what you offer is a recurring, ongoing consumption proposition, you can start the buyer at an entry level price to make it easy but tell them once they have experienced an agreed upon number of months or usages of the value, the price goes to the regular price because the price is still an outrageously wonderful return on investment or savings. So, you are giving them an audition discount or a test-drive discount and then the service on a continuous basis, for you to be able to render it and support it the way they want, is going to be priced afterwards at a full or elevated rate. You want to invest in the relationship at an admittedly and fully acknowledged sharp reduction from the ongoing price for (#) months/usages simply to get them comfortably started. You do this with the understanding that after the agreed upon test period, if they are going to continue with the product or service, the price goes to an elevated rate. You make it clear what the value of the product or service is, and you are buying down the first few months or first few usages so they can grasp the magnitude of the value. 4

5 Return of the Blogs #2 Q&A With Jay (Part 108) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: I get paid on results but I m not getting large enough transaction sizes and thus I m not getting paid a lot. What can I do? I want to get into a higher paid environment. What s a marketing strategy I can use? What should I say to individuals, influencers, and/or potential prospects that I want to send my book/manuscript to? Q: I get paid on results but I m not getting large enough transaction sizes and thus I m not getting paid a lot. What can I do? A: You want to go to people or professions where the transaction is large enough that the value of the client is easily 10x-100x what your monthly fee would be. In this way, you can also have a niche. Look at all the industries and professions where a client is worth much more for longer, and just concentrate on these clients. If you do this, you can get your client to value your service in such a way where they only need one or two clients to make 10x-100x return on what they are paying you. When you re selling the value of your service and you can say, If we don t deliver a 10x return within the first (#) months, we ll return your money. That s powerful. You also want to make sure that if you go to them that you over deliver. Before you enter these categories, make sure you study the competition in terms of what they do and how they do it, and figure out value-added and performanceenhancing methods that will make your proposition not only perform better, but also articulate better. 5

6 Q: I want to get into a higher paid environment. What s a marketing strategy I can use? A: Here s a strategy you can use: Find all the entities that have access to the profiles you want. Help them gratis in exchange for a commitment, that is subject to or contingent to results being visibly seen by them, that they will endorse you and you will be allowed to direct how the endorsement will be presented by them. You can have them do inserts, or interviews with you, or list endorsements, and you give them a fair percentage. Q: What should I say to individuals, influencers, and/or potential prospects that I want to send my book/manuscript to? A: You can say the following, There is a lot of confusion, misinformation, and misunderstanding about (Topic). The result is that a large number of companies in a broad range of industries are never capitalizing or taking advantage of (Benefits of your product or service). For that reason, to help educate and illustrate to you how much benefit this kind of service/product can mean to your business, we have painstakingly created what we believe to be the ONLY book of its kind in existence. It s title is (Book Title). This book is a labor of love an expression of passion for what we do and who we do it for, along with all the various industries we do it for, as well as a significant demystification, education, and demonstration of the power, profitability, and relevance of (Your Expertise). It provides you with (Explain what is in the book). We advertise it for ($). But as an investment in the future potential relationship, or at least to help illuminate for you the benefits of this kind of service, we wish to invest in you and buy you this copy. 6

7 Return of the Blogs #3 Q&A With Jay (Part 109) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: I sell consulting. How do I identify the most profitable types of clients to work with? How do I expand my business into new cities? I want to find new ways of approaching my situation/circumstance. What do you suggest I do? Q: I sell consulting. How do I identify the most profitable types of clients to work with? A: You have to look at where your work has produced the most measurable and quantifiable impact. This could be sales improvement, cost reduction, productivity improvement, overhead reduction etc. You have to look at what the elements of that application of what you do are so you can experiment with value-based pricing. Value-based pricing is not hourly. It s looking at the opportunity, challenge, or possibility and coming back with a price based on an estimate or promise that, if properly applied, executed, supported, or collaborated on, will produce for them a substantial ROI. You also need to provide the mechanism to gauge this. You can t win at a premium price generically. You need to sell a predictable result that will be achievable as long as they collaborate and allow you to execute whatever you do. Look at the companies or organizations for whom those kind of outcomes are critically important. People that aren t consumed with measurable improvements in terms of savings, productivity, profit, etc. aren t going to be willing to pay very much. 7

8 Q: How do I expand my business into new cities? A: You want to start with intelligence gathering, due diligence, and proper reconnaissance. You want to interview as many people in the field who may be qualified to run or support an office. You re interviewing them to find quality people, to educate yourself about where the opportunity is, and to evaluate different strategies, mindsets, and project processes. Once you find someone (or a couple of people) who looks to be great, check out their references. If their references check out, you can put together a package. In this way, instead of starting cold in a market you don t know, you re able to utilize quality people and build yourself a team of two or three people from big companies. If they help grow it after a certain minimum period and achieve a certain minimum milestone sales or volume, you can give a deal where they earn equity without having to put anything in. If this works, it can be a model you use in every market. Q: I want to find new ways of approaching my situation/circumstance. What can I do? A: First you want to expand your mindset and shift your paradigm. You want to question and recognize how much more is possible from everything you do. There are a broad array of ways to do what it is you want to do. The way you may be doing what you do now is likely not the most powerful, profitable, and highest success based. Simply by discovering new models, you can see how other people do things. Then, you want to look at everything you re doing and see how it might pay off more now and in the future. You want to think more strategically. You want to travel outside your industry and evaluate, examine, understand, and appreciate how other businesses in other industries see life differently than you. There are many different ways different people can look at the same goal, opportunity, or function. If you spend your whole life in one field or endeavor, you know a lot about how your field works. However, that would be all you know if all you do is model everyone in that industry. If you look at unrelated industries, you find a multitude of ways to approach the situation, opportunity, or challenge. 8

9 Return of the Blogs #4 Q&A With Jay (Part 110) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: What is upside leverage? What do I need to know about building and developing a strategy for my business? How do I best think about capital? Q: What is upside leverage? A: Upside leverage is your ability to multiply the result, action, response, purchase, calls, visitation, open rates, attendance, traffic, or whatever the vehicles are that you utilize in your marketing. Your goal, in everything you do, is to get higher performance and greater qualitative yield for no more time, effort, expense, or risk. You want to look at where the twenty percent of actions that yield eighty percent of your results are. The idea is that, again, for no more output, you can multiply your outcome. When you focus on upside leverage you are being more strategic you're doing things better and with a focus that is more user oriented. Q: What do I need to know about building and developing a strategy for my business? A: Most people have no strategy. They are tactical and what they do is episodic and intermittent. It doesn t congruently advance and enhance a long-term game plan. When you take the time to evaluate what your current strategy is, you might be shocked at how much better it can be. The odds are high that by building and changing your strategy, you can double, triple, or even quadruple what your business delivers to you. The key is to look at different strategies out there. For example, you can invest first in others and give a detailed understanding of 9

10 why you re doing it and ask them to invest back in you only if they get value. Some people s strategy is to give away a book if people pay a modest fulfillment, and then upgrade them to a higher priced product. Another strategy is to bring people in and buy-down a first purchase for them and make it irresistible. You need to start studying different strategies and see how, why, and the many ways you can directly and indirectly borrow, adapt, adopt, extrapolate, and modify these strategies. Q: How do I best think about capital? A: The first thing you have to do is break capital into its many different dimensions. The simplest form is money dollars, cents, etc. However, capital can be intellectual capital too. This might be proprietary or expert people you have internally or access externally. Capital can also be relational. These are all the different relationships you have that can help you (e.g. vendors who can fund marketing for you, a salesforce for you or work with you, or even work with you on a deferred billing plan.) There is also knowledge capital. This is all the knowledge you either possess or constantly absorb. You have all these capital sources, and most people deploy them in a very linear, predictable, low-yielding way. For example, many people pay for speculative things such as experts, consultants, and marketing. If you can move that to a results-base and pay more on outcome, you ve just turned expenses into a cost of sales. Another example is with relationships. Many people don t understand how to utilize relationships such as endorsements, joint ventures, or people within your buyer base who may be influential. If you can t afford certain expertise, equipment, or resources, you may think you can t grow. However, if you look at your capital differently and determine who has extra resources you don t or equipment they don t fully use that you could partner with or utilize and pay for on a per-transaction basis, it shifts the whole game. 10

11 Return of the Blogs #5 How To REALLY Optimize Your Marketing Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham If you look at your current revenue approaches, you have a multitude of activities that are marketing actions, tactics, and strategies This can include: The model you re using to attract new clients The vehicles you are utilizing to distribute your message The messages you are crafting The propositions are you extending The call to action you are offering The proof you are including in your messages The dimensionalization of the impact, benefit or outcome your prospect will gain by responding or purchasing The risk reversal you are using The sequence of communications you are doing The means you are using (e.g. offline, online, direct mail, inbound calls, space ads, radio, tradeshows, etc.) Within every one of these areas, you have the ability to improve. How do you do it? First, you want to look at what you already know in terms of intelligence, data, insight, and activities. You want to look at what it costs you to access the market, the yield you get, and the correlation of the yield. This can be broken down to a certain dollar figure per prospect and, further, the number of prospects that convert to a sale. Thus, you can then determine what a sale is worth and the dollars that sale is initially worth. Then you can factor in the lifetime value OR a duration of repeat purchase OR a level of value that can be extended if you can source or offer another product. 11

12 Second, you want to look at different sources of buyers, different types of buyers, different responding buyers to different propositions or media, and different buying trends. For example, one kind of buyer may be great for frontend profits but doesn t buy again, whereas another buyer may be okay in terms of frontend profits but ten times more profitable on the backend. This is all about looking at what you already know that you may have never realized you know. When you do this it allows you to determine if you should reallocate resources, money, and/or time to those activities that are producing the highest long-term aggregate value OR maybe you need a blend between frontend cash flow generating activities (even if they aren t sustainable repeat revenue sources) and those activities that will bring in long-term backend revenue. By doing all this, you re looking at everything you re doing and asking: How can I improve any or every part of my marketing model? Further, you want to ask yourself the following: Is the media you are using on target or off? (Meaning, are you paying 100% for only a fractional reach of the market you want? If so, is there a more effective way to pay to just reach the fraction you want?) Are you using a headline or its equivalent? Are you testing and experimenting with various approaches that more effectively communicate the benefit you offer? Are you positioning your marketing for the maximum perception of desired value, advantage, and opportunity to the prospect? In your communications, are you proving your product is, or does, what you say? Are you extending an easy, no-risk way for people to take the next step with you? Do you follow-up with a powerful procession of constantly advancing and enhancing communications that reinforce your proposition? Are you testing so you can find the optimal approaches or are you suboptimizing? 12

13 Understand this: Every day, every hour, every interaction from every mode of marketing you deploy has the ability to produce multiplied results. You likely have a lot of moving parts you don t recognize or analyze. For example, maybe you have word-of-mouth as part of what you do. There are referral generating systems and strategies that can be formulated and applied continuously as a protocol every time you interact with anyone. When certain events happen, such as a buying event or holiday event, if you re not testing new approaches, you are sub optimizing and you aren t really maximizing. Whatever you are doing now, in the forms you are doing it, to as many sources as you are doing it, can t possibly be anywhere close to optimal. The difference between mediocrity and magnificently optimal is quantum times. You have quantum times capacity for greater performance from each and every element of everything you currently do in your marketing. You also have the optionality of adding or replacing marketing mechanisms and vehicles to what you re doing. The combination of this integrated, elevated attitude, thinking and systematic performance-enhancement execution as it relates to your marketing can t help but produce outrageous increases! 13

14 Return of the Blogs #6 Q&A With Jay (Part 111) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: How can I best leverage relationships? What can I do to be more strategic with my products and services? How do I better think about my systems, processes, and procedures? Q: How can I best leverage relationships? A: You can start by identifying all the people out there who have direct access, credibility, and trust of the same market you want that are non-competitive. You want to get them to collaborate with you to introduce your company, products, or services to their affinity group. You can also look for those individuals out there that are iconic that you could get to endorse you or partner with you. You can isolate people on LinkedIn who used to work for companies that have the same market profile you want and they could be an introducer of you to other people that have that market. You can identify businesses that reach your market before, during, after, or instead of what you do that you could work with. You can identify people who have either enormous brand resonance to your audience or people where their current (or past) job or responsibility has prestige you could put on a board of advisors. You can look to people who sell an alternative means of what you do and see about partnering with their past buyers, inactive buyers or non-buyer prospects. Q: What can I do to be more strategic with my products and services? A: Understand that the effort it takes to acquire a buyer is a huge investment. 14

15 The effort and investment it takes to sell them more at the point of purchase or sell them other purchases once you have established trust is very low. Thus, the more products that are complimentary that you can add at the point of sale, as a package, as an add-on, after the first sale or as continuous products that are either repurchased or via introducing new ones that serve their buying profile, the higher the probability you can double, triple, or even quadruple the value of your client. You can also get control of lots of products and services without having to be a distributor; you just make a deal as a principal with the intent that if you become bigger than them, you get equity. Another idea is finding products you commercially sell for money or beneficially offer gratis as if you re buying them something, and you make it easy for people to start a relationship via easy entry offers thus making it easier to move people to the various products and services you re going to sell. Correspondingly, by creating or acquiring more advanced or expensive additional products or services, you can double or triple your profits too. Q: How do I better think about my systems, processes, and procedures? A: You can break down any macro-function and isolate processes within that function that are critical to the outcome such as downtime, tolerances, throughput, timing, and so on. Usually there is an rule at play, and in each of these sub-processes a few people are probably eighty percent higher performers than everyone else. If you can determine what the eighty percent performers of the sub-processes do in each area, and you can teach their mindsets, strategies and approaches to the people that are not at that level, and you do this with ten different sub-processes, the combination is hundreds of percent greater performance. This applies to any business. For example, consider your salespeople, distributors, manufacturers, retailers, and so on. Think about who excels at what. Some are better at opening accounts. Some are better at selling different products. Some are better at sustaining margins. Some are better at selling one industry. In all cases, if you find people who are monumentally better, you want to determine what they do, what their strategy is, what they are thinking, and share it with everyone OR if they are ten times better, you can make them a specialist. If someone can open a category of business ten times better than 15

16 anything else, you make them the opener and they can then pass the account onto someone else. However, you can t do any of this until you first analyze all this. After you do, you want to look at all the processes being used to drive your business and look at how many different ways you can look at tests to improve them. In this way, you are always experimenting and making things better. 16

17 Return of the Blogs #7 Q&A With Jay (Part 112) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: I want to get my book into the hands of potential clients I don t yet have a relationship with. How can I do it? When it comes to Joint Venture contracts, what do I need in the contract and what do I want to avoid? I have a new concept/service I don t have a lot of experience with and I m having trouble selling it to my market. How do I sell it more successfully? Q: I want to get my book into the hands of potential clients I don t yet have a relationship with. How can I do it? A: You can contact anyone who is non-competitive and looking to add value to their market. These are people calling on the same people you want to reach but they aren t competing with you. You can say to them that you want to give them a value-add. If they follow a protocol you give them to position your book correctly, you can give them up to some number of books worth some dollar amount and gift them to the appropriate people in their name. To document the value of the book, if there is a journal, publication, or website your market reads, you can run a one-time ad for a dollar amount so you have an established value for the book. So, go to people who are calling on your target market who are looking equally for value-add and show them you have something valuable. Remember: Everyone is trying to get into the mind of their target audience on a continuous basis and many people selling vertical products and services don t have a vehicle. If your book is sitting on one or more desks every day, it gives you a lot of benefit while simultaneously giving benefit to the individual or organization that gave it to the recipient. 17

18 Q: When it comes to Joint Venture contracts, what do I need in the contract and what do I want to avoid? A: If you re going to a third party to joint venture, power partner, strategically align, or do an endorsement deal, what you want first is benevolent control of what they do and how they do it. The reason is because left to their own devices they won t do what you want. So, first, you have to be clear about what you will provide, what you will do, and how you will work together. Second, you want to ensure you test first before you do a full blown roll-out. Third, depending on what the deal is, you want to ensure they direct inquiries or sales to you, and you will report to them on an appropriate regular basis. Further, since you have no secrets, they are welcome to audit, and you will remit to them whatever the revenue is if they are sending them to you. If they are keeping it and sending you a net fulfillment, then you do the reverse. Fourth, you want an agreement where if the test and roll-out works, it will be a sustaining process and not just a static one-time process. If you hit a certain metric, you want to ensure this is something they do with regularity, cyclicality, seasonally, or with every new person that comes in. Fifth, if it works with them and they want to take it to other people in their industry, you give them the right of first refusal for a time window to do so and get a share. Sixth, you want an agreement where if they do this with you, they will not compete, and if it works with you they will stay with you. Seventh, you agree that the people coming in will not be used for anything other than internal purposes. They will be protected and they won t be shared or partnered externally with anyone else. Q: I don t have a lot of experience with a new concept/service and I m having trouble selling it to my market. How do I sell it more successfully? A: You are asking people to entrust you with belief to follow your directives. You 18

19 have to determine what your qualifications are that would make someone excited to do business with you. If you don t possess enough of a demonstrable track record, you can bring on a silent partner who does have the track record. You don t want to sell hypothesis that hasn t been significantly validated. If you do, you will come up against proof issues. You want to show people what you have done in a broad enough array of scenarios successfully so they have comfort in trusting you. If you don t have this, you re just selling a concept. It may be a concept based on sound principles, but if it doesn t have a lot of success documentation behind it you can wait until you do have success documentation OR find someone who would never think to do what you re doing and make him or her a partner so you can utilize their success stories and verify, validate, and overlap what you re offering with whatever they do and create alignment. 19

20 Return of the Blogs #8 Q&A With Jay (Part 113) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: I'm sending my book to people in my target market. How do I write a cover letter that expertly positions my book? I have thousands of unconverted prospects who have not purchased from me. What can I do? What is the best way I can promote my seminar? Q: I'm sending my book to people in my target market. How do I write a cover letter that expertly positions my book? A: You can say something like this in your cover letter, You probably recognize I ve been in this industry for (#) years and am considered an expert in this area. We ve had to deal with variation and complexities and have advised companies such as: (List Name and Distinctions). After years of (problem solving, challenge resolving, opportunity mining, cost saving and competitive advantage generating) for all these clients to the tune of ($), I thought it might be valuable if I sat down and tried to distill some of my foundational beliefs in an elegantly simple form that you and your team could readily grasp and use as a criteria of decision-making for all your decisions, irrespective of whether you opt for our company or not. This book includes: (List The Benefits and Value The Book Includes). It is my hope that by providing this it will add value and clarity to you and as you go into the future you will have more confidence and certainty in continuing our relationship and expanding it. Q: I have thousands of unconverted prospects who have not purchased from 20

21 me. What can I do? A: First, see if there s a logical service you could provide that is knowledgebased or information-based. Second, if you have a strong and meaningful affinity with your audience, go seek out other product or service providers that are not necessarily in direct alignment with what you do, but have valuable products or services for your market with terrible marketing. Make deals to partner with them (not be a distributor) where you get a 50% or 60% share (depending on whether it s on the frontend or backend) and you participate in all revenue that is residual. If the business you generate exceeds the level they have generated, you can also do a deal where you automatically get equity equivalent to what your pro rata value is. If you can t sell your unconverted prospects what you already have, you can also find something else to offer and package your solution gratis and/or as a bonus. If someone has something that is valuable but they don t have good distribution, you can offer it to your audience and give them your upgrades at no cost. If you are limited in the scope of what you offer then you can simply change your business model. If you can find five or six products or services that are perfect for your market, and the product or services are great but the people offering them aren t great marketers, you can take them over, let them keep their limited clientele, and you offer it through your distribution channel. In this way, your audience gets your normal business service or product as part of this at no extra charge. Q: What is the best way I can promote my seminar? A: Find other people who have non-competitive access to the decision makers you re trying to reach and who have a methodology that is complimentary. Many of these individuals will have variations of the same topic and have nothing beyond this to sell. Go to all the people you can find and make them partners to go to all their existing clients, past clients, and even people they can t sell and offer your event. You have to arm them with more than just generalities and platitudes. Quantify, demonstrate, and show empirical evidence. Denominate, demonstrate, compare, and quantify what you have. If you can t, it will be difficult to sell. If you 21

22 can, go to experts who need you. Go to affinity groups such as associations or journals and partner with them. Go to all the thought leaders and blogs. The least viable way to promote the event is going to be advertising openly to a cold market and trying to win them over. The easiest way to promote the event is going to be going to somebody who already has the trust, credibility, and direct access to the same market you want. 22

23 Return of the Blogs #9 Q&A With Jay (Part 114) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: How do I put together a high level advisory group? I'm considering doing an infomercial. Do you have any thoughts on this? How do I find out the big problems my clients/customers are dealing with? Q: How do I put together a high level advisory group? A: First know that high level is relative and you can always upgrade. An advisory group is normally recruited for a year. It s mutual renewal. It s about four contributing meetings per year. If the people on the advisory are outside your geography, the meeting could be virtual. If they are within your geography, they can be held at restaurant or at your office. However, you don t want to go for iconic high stature people until you really deserve it. Start with knowledgeable people who have demonstrable success well above your level. Go to three or four gradients above you in terms of success level in your community or anywhere in the country or world. Lay out with sincerity what it is you are looking for, why you ve chosen them, and express your commitment to growth, contribution, value-add, and preeminence in building a business that adds more value than competitors. Explain how you want to learn as much as you can from as many people as you can that have pieces of the puzzle you don t. Explain the areas you want knowledge in marketing, strategy, management, positioning, brandings, and so on and how any growth you have, you are fine contributing a percentage of that to a fund distributed to the advisors. Explain how it will mean a lot to you and hopefully mean a lot to them to give back, and that you are asking them in a heartfelt way to contribute. If they feel for whatever reason you (or whomever you 23

24 recruit) aren t worthy after the first quarter, they can withdraw. Q: I'm considering doing an infomercial. Do you have any thoughts on this? A: Start with a radio infomercial. You can test your suppositions, offers, and copy inexpensively. It may not be as good, but you can change things very easily. If you do television infomercials or television production, it s a lot more expensive. It may be more effective on television, but you re going to be dealing with conjecture, and even a simple television production may be $30,000-$50,000. A radio infomercial on the other hand might be closer to $5,000. You want to start and pre-validate so you can change any portion. Further, with the infomercial, you will likely have to start the premise again and make your proposition every minutes since different people tune in and out. Q: How do I find out the big problems my clients/customers are dealing with? A: I teach people something I call The Amazon.com School of Business. If you look up a book on any topic related to what you do, as well as alternative topics, you will gain a lot of insight. If you look at the main books, you look at the titles, subtitles, and chapter titles. Write these down. Next, go look at the book reviews people give the books. The reviews will be five to zero stars. Five means they love it, zero means they hate it. When someone is passionate, both positively and negatively, their subconscious takes over. They express themselves in amazingly clear, beautifully accurate, remarkably dimensional and graphic (even metaphoric) ways. Go to every book in every category seemingly related, parallel, or complimentary to yours, and look at the top 25 or 50 in each category. Look at the five star reviews and the zero star reviews. These represent the happiest people who got what they wanted and those who didn t get what they wanted. In their own words they are telling you what they want and need. You take note of all this and put it together into an integrated value proposition (since you now know what your market wants and doesn t want) and in your copy (since you can now speak to their subconscious). Doing this will give you a more 24

25 powerful understanding of your market than any other arbitrary guesstimate you could make. 25

26 Return of the Blogs #10 Q&A With Jay (Part 115) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: I have product that works but hasn t helped increase my revenue. How do I get clients through the door? So many employees come and go. I really want to have team members that are going to stick with us and help our company grow. What do you suggestion I do? How do I maximize my book's exposure? Q: I have product that works but hasn t helped increase my revenue. How do I get clients through the door? A: Make a comprehensive list of the influencers in your geography, and go to every one of them with a representative and say to them, We would like to buy you (# of uses / # of treatments / # of days) to produce impressive results for you. There s no catch other than the following: We know that if we produce results you (and others) can see, you will be inclined to tell others about us. We can even work out an arrangement where there will be a special privilege for you and for your referrals. You don t have to refer anybody if you don t get a result. This approach is much cheaper and easier than running ads, and it s a lot more direct. However, make sure you tell the recipient that you want to buy it for them not give it to them free. Also, paint a picture for them what they can expect to see as they utilize your product. If they want to continue further, you can sell the product to them for a very modest amount. Q: So many employees come and go. I really want to have team members that are going to stick with us and help our company grow. What do you suggestion I 26

27 do? A: Hire a full-time person. Have him or her travel all over a reasonable geographic range. Have him or her go to where your ideal team members are and say, I am a recruiter for (Your Company and Description Would Go Here). We want to recruit long-term team members who want benefits, a career, a future, certainty, and who want to work at the pinnacle of quality and professionalism. If you just want to work whenever jobs are available or do your own work and not be part of anything meaningful, we have no interest. However, if you have always thought about, or are ready to think about, a career with a company that is growing rapidly and with a company where there is opportunity for growth, stability, benefits, respect, alleviation from feast or famine AND you would have a collection of advantages you don t get with your current situation, then I would like to learn more about you, your work ethic, your background, and see your stability. If you qualify, we could offer you a fabulous lifetime career. Another possibility is to find quality people that were project managers for other companies and are not at those companies now. You can contact them and make them recruiters for you too since they would know everybody. Q: How do I maximize my book s exposure? A: One way you can do it is to partner with other companies that sell products or services to the market you are trying to reach. This could be partner distribution sources for your book. You could also have the book distributed by someone that has a relationship with your target market, have them go deep on the topics of the book, and give people a short course primer live or by webinar. In this way you can offer a number of different short course primer trainings on variations of your methodology that gives them idea they can validate and use. The strategy here is that you want to find out who already has the relationship with the decision maker where your product or service is anything but competitive, but you can partner with them. Further, you have to be able to then give the partner a share of whatever evolves from the book. You could have the partner buy the book for their former or 27

28 existing clients, and they can get a share of the backend. 28

29 Return of the Blogs #11 Q&A With Jay (Part 116) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: I want to consult with businesses based on a percentage of revenue I generate for them. How do I protect myself? How do I reach out to my target client/market and engage them so they interested and motivated to work with me? I have a new technology product. How do I start getting people to use it and create interest for it? Q: I want to consult with businesses based on a percentage of revenue I generate for them. How do I protect myself? A: First, you need a collaborative client. Second, you need a monitoring and measuring system so you know the results you re creating. Third, you need a binding agreement that gives you audit protection. Fourth, you need to be dealing with an honest person. Fifth, you need to only select clients you know are underperforming rather than doing really well. Trying to do better than someone already doing well is marginal. Finding someone who is spending money and doing terrible (and satisfies the other criteria) is a no-brainer. Sixth, the contract needs to stipulate that if you generate a minimum amount of revenue it automatically renews and continues via a 10% increase. However, if they stop doing it while you achieve the goal they have to give you some kind of a termination payment. 29

30 Q: How do I reach out to my target client/market and engage them so they interested and motivated to work with me? A: Look at all the recurring issues that are evident to your target client/market. Whether you market direct or give it to a partner, list the categories, companies, and people most appropriate for you and say to them, I want to win your trust and help you solve a problem that once resolved can (free up performance, productivity, collaboration, eliminate or reduce service issues, reduce waste, etc.). Before I do that, I want to share three result-proven techniques that deal with three issues I promise exist in your life/company today. If you re unaware of them, here are the indicators:... If you have any of these three or all three of these issues, we want to give you a method to resolve it or mitigate it right now. Only after you ve seen the power of our strategies and our processes would I want you to let us work with you. Q: I have a new technology product. How do I start getting people to use it and create interest for it? A: You want to joint venture with people that have a large universe of whatever the profile is of people that would want your product. Do an expression of interest tied to a beta-test offer. If somebody shows interest, you can offer to have them use the product for some period of time at a very modest price because you want users who will document their results. Try this with two or three people and articulate the proposed value. Don t just explain what it is, but delineate what it will do differently and where it will bring value, how it will bring advantage, and how it will bring positive reductions and/or enhancements. 30

31 Return of the Blogs #12 Q&A With Jay (Part 117) Words of Wisdom by Jay Abraham In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: I m in a field/industry that is dying. What can I do? What is a creative strategy I can use to grow my business? How do I realistically make my dreams and goals come true? Q: I m in a field/industry that is dying. What can I do? A: Here are two possible strategic directions you can take: 1. Be so preeminent you get a larger share of the market, and thus you can grow in a down market. If you get a larger share of whoever is still coming into the market, this is one approach. 2. You can reduce your costs and maximize what you re doing. This means looking at every reflective impact point. Most people don t understand that there are 10 to 15 impact points in their current revenue approaches. Nobody really looks at them, let alone maximizes them. Everything you are currently doing is likely not optimal, and you can do conservative testing to find more optimal approaches. If you maximize what you re doing, you should be able to free up 10% to 30% more profit. You can then invest that 10% to 30% profit in reengineering or re-launching you and your business. If you can t do this within the constraints of what you are currently doing, you can do it in another industry. Q: What is a creative strategy I can use to grow my business? A: You can find companies that are doing modestly but have entry-levels or exitlevels for the kind of products or services you sell. You can acquire these 31

32 companies on an earn-out. The question to ask yourself here is: What do people buy before, during, after, and/or instead of your products and services? If you own the business, have access, or have a partnership with that company where they feed you their leads, it can reduce your costs dramatically and enhance your sales cycle immensely. It will make the sales cycle faster and cost less because they already have the people that will buy before you AND they have the trust so they can refer and offer your products or services. You can do this with lots of people, including those people that buy at the same time as you, after you, instead of you, and so on. Q: How do I realistically make my dreams and goals come true? A: Start by doing a self-assessment reality check. What are all your unrealized goals, ideas, visions, and desires for your business and/or your life? Value rank them on a time-basis of short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Then, reverse engineer them. If you get stuck, you can go outside to mastermind groups, or online and find someone who possesses the skill you desire, or buy books on the topic. There s no excuse for virtually anyone not to be anything they want if they want it positively enough. If you want something and you re not getting it, you ought not stay frustrated when you have a mind and access to such a huge knowledge base. If you don t know where you are or you don t know where you re going, and if you don t know that where you re going is the right direction, then you have to figure out where you re going and you have to decide if that is where you should be going. If you don t know, you will sit there frustrated but it doesn t have to be that way for you. 32