Issue #2065
- WEALTHY: 9 ways to improve your business GPA (Michael Masterson)
- HEALTHY: Your body-fat percentage may not be as low as you think (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Alex Kindler on evaluating your business
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Are your prospective customers really interested in buying? (Paul Smithson)
- The Tony Bennett method of powerful presentations (Virginia Avery)
- It’s Good to Know… about Brazil’s favelas
- Add "lugubrious" to your vocabulary
Your Personal Invitation to Join a Small Cadre Of “Freedom Fighters”In Our Nation’s Heartland This July!
Dear ETR Reader,
Coming this summer, Early to Rise presents a five day challenge for you, should you decide to accept it…
The stakes? Reclaiming your personal liberty… declaring your self-reliance… and seizing financial independence forever.
This July 10th to 14th, we’re going to take a small group of ETR readers and work alongside them to build your own Internet business – the whole shebang, from soup to nuts – in an intensive, 5-day, business-building program better than anything we’ve done before.
You’re going to walk in with nothing – no product, no marketing skills, no technical know-how – and you’ll walk out with your own online business.
What you will learn flat-out works. You will build a professional, popular, and profitable Internet business. When you walk out the door, you’ll be super-prepared for success in a way that very few entrepreneurs ever are, online or off.
ETR’s “Five Days in July” Internet Business-Building Workshop is going to deliver success. Actually, it will OVER deliver. And your success, of course, is the bottom line. Sound good?
Okay, then let’s get going… let’s build something that WORKS… your own, REAL Internet business.
It only takes a few minutes to take that first key step. Find out how easy it is to join us and get all the details here.
Looking forward to seeing you there,
- Patrick Coffey
"It’s almost like a management report card. By getting a valuation done on some periodic basis, it can give a business owner a sense of how much their business increased or decreased during some certain time period."
Alex Kindler
The 9 P’s of a Money-Making Business
By Michael Masterson
BB, the legendary copywriter and one of my biggest clients, is a constant articulator of powerful, business-building ideas. Recently, in a memo to his senior executives, he discussed the difficulty of starting and growing new businesses, and offered a brilliant synopsis of "what it takes to make (such) businesses work."
"You have heard about the Four P’s of salesmanship: Promise. Picture. Proof and Payoff. Those are very effective guides in creating sales packages that produce. But I have five more P’s I’d like to share with you. These could be helpful in launching and/or growing your business."
BB’s Five P’s of business-building are…
1. Program: You need a business model that works – one that can produce reliable, long-term profitability with an acceptable level of investment and risk.
2. Product: You want to sell products that are easy to sell the first time and even easier to sell thereafter. In other words, you want to sell products that give people what they are looking for at a price they can rationalize.
3. Prospects: You need people to sell to. And you need a sufficient number of them to meet your business’s long-term goals. They have to be plentiful. And they have to be profitable. Where do you find such quality customers? Mailing lists? Websites? Keyword searches? Telephone calls? Finding potential buyers is a big part of any business.
4. Proposition: Every market is unique. So is every product. Figuring out the optimum way to sell your unique product to a given market segment is your first and most important priority. Until you do that, you can’t produce profits.
5. People: Every business, no matter what it does, where it’s located, or how automated its processes are, depends on people to create and maintain its profits. Taking a business to the next level – even to keep it from falling backward – is most easily accomplished by the hiring, promotion, training, and nurturing of a team of key people who can work skillfully and efficiently. You have to find them and then motivate them and then hold on to them.
To BB’s very good list, I would add four more P’s that you have to pay attention to…
6. Promotions: Discovering the right proposition for your business is the first – but only the first – priority of selling. To be able to keep your business profitable, you have to be able to produce a continuous flow of successful, customer-grabbing promotions (sales offers that attract attention, offer benefits to the customers, and persuade them to buy your products). A business that can’t produce breakthrough promotions on an ongoing basis is a business that is doomed to mediocrity or even failure.
7-9. Procedures, Protocols, and Processes: If you get the first six P’s working right, your business will never suffer from a lack of sales. But if you don’t have effective operations – order-taking, fulfillment, accounting, and customer service – your profits will always be half of what they should be, and your stress will be double what it needs to be.
Take a few minutes right now to rate your business according to the nine P’s. Answer the following questions:
- Can you describe, in 25 words or less, the basic selling program that is responsible for 80 percent of the growth and profitability of your business? What is the primary way you convert prospects into buyers? How do you maximize the lifetime value of your buyers?
- How are your products better and/or different from those of your competitors? Why are they easy to sell? Why do your customers keep on buying them?
- Who are your best prospects? Where do you find them? Can you afford to acquire them at the price you are currently paying? Is there a sufficient number of them available at that price?
- Which of your offers is best at acquiring first-time customers? What is your most profitable offer for existing customers?
- Among your current employees, who are the superstars? Who is your superstar in marketing? Sales? Product development? If you are one of your company’s superstars, who are you mentoring so that you can be replaced when the time comes?
- Could you create your company’s next breakthrough sales promotion? If not, who could you turn to? Do you have a machine that regularly creates successful marketing campaigns to fund your growth? Or are you dependent on an aging promotion?
- Does your business run smoothly? Are orders processed quickly? Do you have good accounting? Do you get commendations from customers for your good customer service? Or are there problems that, despite years of effort, haven’t gotten any better?
Give yourself a letter grade for each of these aspects of your business, based on how you think you compare to other companies in your industry. Be tough but fair. Give yourself an A if and only if you are among the very best. You will probably end up with just one or two As, and a smattering of Bs and Cs.
I did this exercise with Walt P. yesterday. We’ve had great success in bringing his business from nothing to more than $200,000 in 14 months. But problems are arising, as they do when growth is fast. Yesterday, those problems were weighing heavily on our minds. "Let’s take an hour and analyze the business," I suggested, "using this simple system."
We gave it the following report card…
Program: B+
We have a good idea how to make the initial sale (where to go to find prospects, how to intrigue them, how to sell them the first time) and how to sell them after that.
Product: A
We have great products. Really great products. Walt creates them, and he understands what makes a product great.
Prospects: C
So far, we are only scratching the surface in terms of identifying good media for our advertising. We are gradually expanding our marketable universe each month by about 2,000 prospects, but we should – and will one day – be growing our prospect file by 10 times that number. That is something we have to work on in a serious way.
Proposition: A-
The offer – what you charge for your product, the payment terms, and the guarantee – is critical to any business. In Walt’s business, we have a very good idea of what that should be. That idea is based on my experience – more than 10 years in the industry – and from being able to see what our competitors are doing. There are certainly things about the offer that we can test – particularly in the area of continuity sales – but, for the most part, we believe we understand how to form our selling propositions.
People: B-
The employees that we have are very good, but to do a better job of expanding the business’s marketable universe and improve operations we will need two more superstars. Getting them is our top priority right now.
Promotions: A
Walt and I work together on most of the leads, and then pass them along to a copywriter we’ve been mentoring for several years. The combination has been terrific. Our response rates are as good as we can hope for. We see a need to hire a junior copywriter to be tutored by our protégé so we can continue to produce more copy. But we feel confident that we have the creative power to produce good promotions now and in the future.
Procedures, Protocols, and Processes: D
Right now, because of the surge in business, we are doing a bad job of entering and fulfilling orders. We have to move our fulfillment out of house and learn to manage service companies. We also have to get our accounting and customer service departments working more smoothly. We need a VP of operations – someone really good and very detail-oriented (because we aren’t) – and we need that person ASAP.
Based on that quick assessment of the business, it was easy for us to see the importance of hiring two more superstars – one to help us get operations in order and the other to take a lead in marketing so we can grow our prospect file as it needs to be grown. If we make it a priority to fill these two positions, we can have it done in 30 to 45 days, and then begin the process of integrating and educating our new people. In six months, if all goes well, we will be ready for the next step up – to the $5 million level.
[Ed. Note: What does your business's report card look like? Use the nine P's to evaluate how you're doing, and let us know what you find out at ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Write "Business GPA" in the subject line, and include your name and hometown if you want to see your response in an upcoming issue of Early to Rise.]
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As the dollar continues to erode, so will the accounts of those who rely solely on the usual stocks and bonds. But the demise of the dollar won’t be a calamity for everyone…
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Are Internet Users Looking to BUY… or Just Doing Research?
By Paul Smithson
In ETR #2057, I told you that the most important thing to do before developing a new product is to find out if there’s a market for it. By using Keyword Selector Tools, you’ll get a good idea of how many people are searching for your product (or something like it) online. A lot of searches means a lot of potential buyers.
"But," you may be thinking, "I do all sorts of research online. Just because I type in ‘laptop computer’ doesn’t mean I actually want to buy one."
That’s true. A huge percentage of the people who are searching online just want information – free information – not a product they have to pay for. If, for example, you type in the key phrase gift baskets in Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool, you’ll find that 154,100 people searched for that key phrase last month. But not all of them were looking to buy gift baskets. Many were just looking for instructions on how to make them.
A good guideline to help you figure out whether Internet surfers are simply doing research – not looking to buy – is the number of words they use in their search terms.
- One or two words ("gift baskets") means they’re probably doing research.
- Three or more words ("corporate gift basket" or "gift basket supplies" or "Orange County gourmet gift basket") means they’re probably looking to buy.
When an Internet surfer is serious about buying a particular type of product, he’ll use additional words to refine his search, instead of generic terms that may yield untargeted results. If you use these types of specific keywords on your website, in your e-newsletter, or in your sales letters, you’ll attract very motivated, highly targeted buyers.
[Ed. Note: Ready to step up to the plate and start your own Internet business? If so, online marketing expert Paul Smithson and ETR's team of friendly experts are standing by to help you. We've partnered with Paul, creator of the XSitePro website-building program, so you'll be able to come to ETR's 5 Days in July conference with nothing - no product, no marketing skills, no technical know-how - and walk out 5 days later with your own online business. No experience required, and it only takes a few minutes to get started!]
Your Presentation Isn’t Just About Your Speech
By Virginia Avery
I had the pleasure of seeing Tony Bennett perform at the first Sonoma Jazz Festival. In addition to wowing the audience with his songs, he was a class act. His clothes were impeccable, his manner pleasant to every one, even during rehearsal. By contrast, some of the other musicians were semi-sloppy and arrogant.
Keep that in mind when you’re preparing a business presentation. Your dress and attitude are as important as the words you are saying.
To look like someone who deserves to be listened to, dress a bit more formally than your audience. And don’t wear clothes that draw attention to themselves. Men: Keep your jacket buttoned, at least at the beginning of your presentation. If you don’t, your flapping tie and the reflection from your belt buckle will be distracting. Women: Don’t dress provocatively.
I once watched a young woman make a presentation in very high heels and a belly-baring top. During the break, several people commented on her clothes, but no one mentioned what she said.
[Ed. Note: Virginia Avery is a communications specialist who has trained thousands of individuals to make more dynamic presentations. Become more confident and persuasive in just two days with her Presenting Yourself Professionally workshop.]
Don’t Rely on a Handheld Body-Fat Analyzer
By Craig Ballantyne
As a personal trainer, I hear from men just about every week who claim to have only six or eight percent body fat (the level of a professional bodybuilder). The truth is, many of those men are nowhere close to that number.
These people are using handheld body-fat analyzers, which are rarely accurate and often underestimate the amount of fat you are carrying on your body.
Handheld fat monitors use a method called "bio-electrical impedance" to estimate body fat. The machine sends an electric current through your body, and that current is impeded at different rates by fat tissue and by lean tissue. Based on this, the machine calculates a body-fat percentage compared to average numbers from large population samples.
In a recent study, researchers compared bio-electrical impedance machines to more accurate methods of body-fat analysis. They found that, on average, the bioelectrical impedance measures of fat mass were 2.4 kg lower.
So if you’re using a handheld body-fat analyzer, don’t get too smug about the results. No matter what a machine says, what matters is how good you feel about the way you look in the mirror, how your clothes fit, and the inches around your waist.
A better way to track your fat-loss progress is to measure the circumferences of your upper arm, waist, hips, and thighs. With proper nutrition and a healthy workout regimen, you will see those numbers get smaller as you burn fat.
[Ed. Note: Craig Ballantyne is an expert consultant for Men's Health magazine. If you're looking to burn fat, build muscle, and quickly step into the body you have always wanted with just three workouts each week, check out Craig's fat-loss system, Turbulence Training for Fat Loss.]
It’s Good to Know: About Brazil’s Favelas
In Brazil, the shantytowns that ring the major cities – the most well known are in the hills above Rio de Janeiro – are called "favelas." Often the site of intense violence between drug traffickers, police, and vigilante groups, these poverty-stricken areas usually have electricity but are affected by sewage and public health problems. Strangely, favela tours, offered by local entrepreneurs, have become popular with foreign tourists.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Do You Have What It Takes – and I Mean Really Have What It Takes – to Make It? In the Next 30 Days You Could Be Telling Your Boss to Take a Long Walk Off a Short Pier!
The leeches won’t stop till you drop.
Look, I’m sure you’ve felt it before… no matter how much you make it seems someone always has their hand in your pocket.
Your boss, the IRS, even your credit card companies, they’re all taking turns at your wallet.
If you’ve finally reached your boiling point and would love to stop these leeches from sucking you dry then you owe it to yourself to read on… But only if you’re serious about getting out of the daily grind. This isn’t for the faint of heart.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Lugubrious
"Lugubrious" (luh-GOO-bree-us) – from the Latin for "to mourn" – indicates sorrow, often in a way that seems feigned, exaggerated, or ridiculous.
Example (as used by Joe Queenan in The New York Times): "I myself have never recovered from going toe-to-toe with The Return of the Native as a teenager, not only because Thomas Hardy’s bleak vision and lugubrious prose made me feel bleak and lugubrious, but also because it was my first exposure to the boundless cruelty of which adults are capable."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
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